


The Festival of Shells

by ncfan



Series: Femslash Big Bang 2020 [3]
Category: TOLKIEN J. R. R. - Works & Related Fandoms, The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: F/F, Femslash, Femslash Big Bang, Femslash Big Bang Monthly Challenge, Femslash Friday, In all fairness would be rated PG if AO3 had a PG rating, POV Female Character, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-31
Updated: 2020-09-18
Packaged: 2021-03-06 04:15:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 37,994
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25637161
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ncfan/pseuds/ncfan
Summary: Anairë accompanies Eärwen to a summer festival in Alqualondë.
Relationships: Anairë/Eärwen (Tolkien)
Series: Femslash Big Bang 2020 [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1617850
Comments: 20
Kudos: 10
Collections: Femslash Big Bang, Femslash Friday





	1. Chapter One

Eärwen had been almost giddy with excitement when Anairë had agreed to a second trip to Alqualondë. Honestly, she had not expected Anairë to give her assent to the idea, especially not considering that her oldest sister had given birth to her first child a month and a half ago, and the entire family, Ñoldor and Vaniai alike, had gathered in Tirion to celebrate the arrival of this first entry into the next generation. Eärwen was well-aware of Anairë’s temperament, and even more keenly aware of Anairë’s opinions regarding crowded and noisy houses, but she was also familiar with Anairë’s attitude towards her obligations. When Eärwen had come to Anairë with this offer, she had expected that Anairë would refuse her, whatever Eärwen’s _hopes_ might have been for her answer. Not happily, perhaps, with an air of prim, prickly frustration at the lack of peace in her own home, perhaps, but still, Eärwen had expected that she had refused.

But Anairë had stared down at the parchment she had been writing on for a long moment, quill poised over the sheet, teeth running over her lip as if she was feeling out her own flesh, and then, she had nodded her head, and accepted Eärwen’s invitation.

 _“You must be_ desperate _for peace and quiet.”_

_Anairë made a grumbling response, too low and indistinct for Eärwen to make out, though she thought she had caught the gist._

_And sure enough, Anairë soon elaborated on her own. She straightened up at her writing desk, setting her quill down somewhat more sharply than was typical of her, when gentleness was a byword for the way Anairë treated all of her writing materials, and delicate quills most of all. Anairë seemed to realize this herself, for she paused long enough to wince and glance down at the quill, eyes raking over it before she gathered herself enough to respond to the remark._

_“I have seen my sister’s child.” She sounded just as prim as Eärwen had expected her to be when she gave the refusal that would never now come. Not as prickly, perhaps—perhaps Anairë had managed to find a day or two to herself, in all of this?—but just as prim. “I have seen the child. I have held the child. The child has disrupted my sleep with its incessant crying. The child has thrown up on my dress. I have listened to my kin tell me, all of them, even the youngest of my siblings, who is little more than a child herself, that my irritation regarding this is just a sign of my immaturity, and that I will feel differently when I have children of my own. I…” And here, it seemed almost as if she was having to force the words up through her throat and out of her mouth, which, considering that it was Anairë, there was a very real chance that she was. “…I could use a respite. Even if it means I must leave the city to attain it.” Anairë ran her fingers gently over the feather of the quill, before fixing Eärwen in a deep frown. “And you can stop looking at me like that, now. There is nothing amiss; I am merely seeking some quiet, somewhere I do not have to listen to everyone cooing over a squalling babe, the same as they have been cooing over that same squalling babe for more than a month now.”_

Eärwen thought that Anairë could have put it just a _little_ more diplomatically than that, but she wasn’t going to be picky, if this meant that she really could have Anairë in Alqualondë with her. She wasn’t about to tell Anairë’s family what she had said regarding the child—still nameless, Eärwen had heard; the mother was having some trouble deciding on a good name for her, and the father did not want to give the child a name until after his wife had found a name she thought suited—and thus, there would be no problem between Anairë and her kin that could have disrupted the trip Anairë was taking with Eärwen.

It had taken little time for Anairë to pack her belongings, and Anairë had evidently run into no opposition from her family. Eärwen was to understand that Anairë’s parents, at least, were of the opinion that their bookish daughter needed to get out and travel more, in spite of their bookish daughter’s evident discomfort with the idea of leaving the city where she had been born and grown to womanhood, even to journey to Valmar where the rest of her kin resided. As for the rest? Eärwen could only assume that the presence of a new addition to the family was so engrossing that they did not particularly care, nor perhaps even notice, that another, older addition to their family, was going away for a while.

Best not to dwell on that, Eärwen thought. She knew not Anairë’s family, not nearly as well as she knew Anairë herself. Anairë did not seem overly distressed by the fact that her family had not really marked the fact that she was leaving Tirion for a while during this time of celebration. In fact, she seemed almost relieved that no one had tried to prevail upon her to stay, and rather impatient with the revelation that Eärwen was to spend a few more days in Tirion before returning to Alqualondë to rejoin her own kin.

It was only when the porters were loading their trunks into the carriage and Anairë was taking a seat next to Eärwen in the plush-cushioned compartment that Anairë, having apparently decided that now was the time, raised an eyebrow, fixed Eärwen in a long, curious stare, and asked her, “Was there any reason in particular for this invitation, now?”

Eärwen busied herself with opening the latch on the window in the carriage—summer this year was a hot one, and they were unlikely to find themselves in for a pleasant first day of their journey with the window shut to the breeze—before answering Anairë’s question. If she was being very honest with herself—and since it was purely with herself, there was no reason not to be—Eärwen had been looking for a distraction, however short-lived it might be, if only it lasted long enough that she would be able to piece her answer together fully before she started speaking.

“I don’t know how much attention you pay to the Lindai’s social calendar,” Eärwen started, wondering for the first time if this might not serve to put Anairë off of what she had agreed to. But it was too late now, and Eärwen forged ahead. “The Festival of Shells is coming up, and I thought you might want to experience it for yourself.”

That was… mostly true. Eärwen did hope that Anairë would enjoy herself once they had arrived in Alqualondë, once the festival was underway. The whole point of the trip was tied up tightly in Anairë’s enjoyment of what she would experience in Alqualondë, but the festival itself was not the whole of Eärwen’s reasons for inviting Anairë along back with her to her city by the Sea.

If Eärwen told Anairë the exact reason why she was inviting Anairë along, well… Eärwen was not certain whether Anairë would throw herself from a moving carriage in the effort to get back to her own home. In the interest of making sure that Anairë did not wind up with a sprained ankle or a concussion, Eärwen not being the surgeon that her mother was, she did not particularly want to find out.

Though perhaps Anairë had suspected something, for the frown that furrowed her brow held more than a hint of suspicion to it as she pressed, “What is the Festival of Shells? I’ve never heard of it before.”

“I’m not surprised,” Eärwen remarked with what Anairë would no doubt find obnoxious cheer, and if so, _good_ , since if she found nothing beyond the surface in Eärwen’s response to her, she would be less likely to ask prying questions over the several days it would take them to reach Alqualondë. “It’s not celebrated outside of Alqualondë and a few of the outlying villages on the coast. There’s no reason for it to make its way west to Tirion, considering that Tirion is not a place where you are likely to find seashells out in the surrounding fields.”

Anairë raised a fine, dark eyebrow. “Yes, but what _is it_?”

“It’s just a summer festival,” Eärwen said with a laugh, and if the cheer in her voice was slightly less obnoxious now, then she had succeeded in her aims. “About seashells. Really, Anairë, it isn’t anything truly spectacular, but I _am_ fond of it—“ that much was totally true “—and I had wanted to see you experience it as well.”

They had not really had festivals in Endóre, you know. There were celebrations that had organically cropped up, but even though Eärwen had been a little child at the time, she had always gotten the impression that they were held more because the Lindai had needed a distraction from the realities of their lives in the starlit darkness on the edge of the Sea in Endóre, rather than for the simple joy of it. Eärwen’s mother was a surgeon. She had had an ample supply of Ellalië corpses to dissect to learn the secrets of Ellalië bodies, the better to further her profession and her ability to save lives and save her patients from being permanently affected by the fallout from injuries that a competent surgeon could set right in a few hours. The fact that her mother _had_ such an ample supply of Ellalië corpses suggested a certain need for the Lindai to distract themselves from the circumstances that were creating so many corpses.

They had not really had festivals in Endóre. What they had had were organically-orchestrated distractions from the fact that they who were deathless were dying, anyways. It was only when they had made their way over to this Blessed Realm that festivals began to become a part of the lives of the Lindai in any form, let alone something that could be planned out and enacted deliberately.

(Eärwen wondered sometimes about the Lindai they had left behind, the Eglath and the rest of them. Naturally, wondering whether they had ever developed festivals on their own or if they just continued to try to distract themselves from the deaths befalling their kith and kin was not exactly the most pressing thing Eärwen wondered about the kin they had left behind in Endóre. More often than not, Eärwen wondered first if any of them were even alive at all anymore. But sometimes, she did wonder if they had ever come to this own their own, if they had ever begun to hold celebrations for the sheer joy of them, rather than because the reality of their lives were such that they needed to periodically disconnect from that reality. Whatever had become of the Lindai who had been left behind on that far eastern shore, Eärwen hoped that their lives had improved enough that death was no longer such a pervasive reality, hoped that their lives had great enough ease that they could pursue joy without any thought for what that joy was supposed to be covering up.)

It was only when the Lindai had finally made their way to this Blessed Realm that they had had the safety and the leisure to consider that, perhaps, they could have such things as festivals, that they could pursue joy with no other motive behind it, with no need to cover up any of the anxieties that plagued them all so dearly. And yes, they had at first needed the examples set by the Ñoldor and the Vaniai, but soon enough, they had had festivals of their own, conjured from their own minds and following their own inclinations and customs. Soon enough, they hadn’t needed the Ñoldor and the Vaniai to provide a template; they were doing quite well in that regard all on their own.

The Festival of Shells was one of the oldest of these. Eärwen had still been a child, though one fast approaching adulthood, when the Festival of Shells was proposed, and she had been just a few years shy of her majority when the first Festival of Shells was celebrated in Alqualondë. It was… The Ñoldor, who seemed to delight in their festivals being as intricate and complex as possible, no doubt thought the Festival of Shells a bit simple, perhaps downright simplistic, thought Eärwen had never heard a Ñoldo express such an opinion in her hearing.

No matter how simple or simplistic those others who had not come up with the Festival of Shells and did not celebrate it at home might have thought it, Eärwen would not denigrate her people’s oldest independent festival in such a manner. She’d never felt the inclination, not even for a moment. It was joy without a cringing motive, joy without the need to flinch and look away from the dark.

There was no more fear of the dark here in this Blessed Realm. Eärwen would never fear to walk the darkness again. Was that not reason enough for joy?

It was reason enough for joy, but not enough of an explanation for Anairë, it seemed, for the curiosity and mild suspicion on her face had abated not one whit. “You’re not being very specific.”

“I want it to be a surprise.”

Anairë scoffed. “A _surprise_. I wonder, should I have brought my grandfather’s old shield with me? It’s coated with rust, but it could probably hold off some level of assault.”

In the interest of making sure she did not give away too much (Anairë was delicately-built, and Eärwen did not think she’d be able to get away from jumping out of a moving carriage without some sort of injury), Eärwen merely shrugged her shoulders, smiled secretively, and replied, “Hmm, perhaps. You’ll find out once you get there.”

Anairë pinched the bridge of her nose. “Oh, so you’re going to be like _that_ , are you? This is going to be a pleasant trip.”

However Anairë might have meant it, Eärwen certainly hoped so.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Egladhrim** —‘The Forsaken People’ (Sindarin); the name which Thingol’s people gave to themselves after he disappeared in Nan Elmoth  
>  **Ellalië** —the Telerin form of 'Eldalië'; 'the Elven-Folk', usually a term used to refer to all of the Elves, though generally someone speaking of the Eldalië is not referring to the Avari.  
>  **Endóre** —Middle-Earth (Quenya)  
>  **Lindai** —an old clan-name for the Lindar, the name the Nelyar used to refer to themselves, which means ‘Singers’ (Telerin)  
>  **Vaniai** —the Telerin Quenya equivalent of 'Vanyar'


	2. Chapter Two

The light of Ninquelótë and Culúrien was blessed and glad, and whenever Eärwen stood within it, she felt rejuvenated and young in a way that no lamplight could ever give her. But it was also very, very _bright_ , and after a while, Eärwen found that it was just too much. The Vaniai and the Ñoldor could live in a land of forever-light, perhaps, and if they truly could live in such a world without it ever overwhelming them, without it ever disrupting their sleep, then Eärwen was hardly going to begrudge them such. But after a few weeks in the Calacirya or west of it, Eärwen found herself longing for home, longing for a sky that was lit up by the stars, rather than by eternal gold and silver light. No, she wasn’t just longing for a dark sky light up by stars; she was longing _for_ the stars. The stars had been Eärwen’s most stable point of reference in her childhood, something that was always with her even when very little else was with her, and she was fond enough of them to wish never to abandon them for long. Gold and silver light was blessed and glad and glorious, but the stars had been here for much longer, and they would always hold primacy in Eärwen’s heart.

Anairë, meanwhile, was seemingly the opposite. Eärwen had noted in her some interest in the stars, and she was glad for that, for Anairë’s mind, while inquiring, could be somewhat selective about what she was to be inquiring about. That Anairë had decided that the stars were worth being curious about, worth studying in any manner, it felt like an acceptance that Eärwen had not realized she was waiting for until after she found herself basking in it.

Anairë possessed interest enough in the stars that she had accepted a first offer of a trip to Alqualondë some time ago, for though there were observatories on Taniquetil, they were high up enough that for those who were not acclimated to the sheer height, to spend much time there could be highly unpleasant, and even there, the astronomers were not entirely free of the light of the Trees, and the visibility just wasn’t what it could have been, were these mountains in entirely starlit Endóre. Only when you traveled east past the Calacirya were you to find a truly unobstructed view of the stars, and sometimes, Eärwen wondered if the Ñoldor in the Blessed Realm would ever have truly become so friendly with the Lindai if not for the fact that past the Calacirya, in the domain of the Lindai, was the only real place in this Blessed Realm where you could get an unobstructed view of the stars without enduring the discomfort of extreme height. Knowing the Ñoldor, there were plenty who would have eventually drifted east to see what the Lindai were doing out of sheer curiosity, but Eärwen thought it might have taken place considerably later than it did.

…She supposed that the fact that Finwë had come over here agitatedly demanding news of Elwë from her father helped with that. Other Ñoldor were bound to come following after him, like sheep following after a shepherd, considering how hastily he had made that first trip over to Tol Eressëa, before the part of the Lindai which Eärwen belonged to had made the migration to the mainland. That would certainly have helped.

Anairë possessed interest enough in the stars to see some value in journeying to Alqualondë, she who thought that the city she was born in was the only city that had ever been meant for her, but Eärwen had not let this fool her into believing that Anairë was entirely comfortable with the idea of spending long amounts of time under a sky lit up only by stars. Anairë had only visited Alqualondë once before, but Eärwen _had_ been with her nearly the whole time she had been there, and she had made a point of closely watching Anairë’s reactions and behavior, made a point of keeping a close eye on Anairë to gauge if she was experiencing any distress at her new surroundings. She could do no less, after all.

For the first few days, Anairë had seemed so absorbed in drinking in the sights and sounds and smells of a city that she had never visited before and a Sea she had never _seen_ before that no distress found her, not even for a moment. There _had_ been moments when she had been _thrown_ , of course—moments when the Telerin dialect, spoken by many in the city rather more thickly than it was spoken by Eärwen herself ( _whatever_ comments Anairë might make about that dialect, usually after Eärwen made some remark about Quendya), was such that Anairë did not immediately understand all of what was being said to her; moments when Anairë stared down at seafood of the sort that she had never seen before, let alone eaten before, and seemed very much as if she didn’t even know what to do with it; moments when Anairë became frustrated with the Lindai clothes that Eärwen had given her to wear as long as they were in the city together (alright, so Eärwen had had to guess on Anairë’s measurements, and the clothes weren’t quite as well-fitting as they could have been as a result), and Eärwen had to help her untangle herself in a discreet alley somewhere, so the state Anairë found herself in would not draw any comment and humiliate her unduly.

Anairë had been _thrown_ on several occasions, those first few days, but her own personality, while it had contributed to her being thrown in the first place, had also helped her out of those situations without disgracing herself or others. Once she had learned of something she did not know, she needed to learn it only once. There was no stumbling through the lessons many times over, staring in flustered frustration at something she knew she ought to remember, but didn’t. She ate the seafood without complaint, she wore her Telerin clothes with, if not grace, than at least some _ease_ , and when shopkeepers spoke to her in Telerin Quenya instead of the Ñoldorin Quenya or Quendya she was more familiar with, she either politely (if a little awkwardly) asked the shopkeeper to repeat themselves, or looked to Eärwen for help if she knew that she had no help of guessing what the shopkeeper was saying to her with the aid of slower speaking.

After a few days in Alqualondë, Anairë had no longer been truly thrown by anything she encountered. Eärwen would not lie and say that Anairë had exhibited true _ease_ with her surroundings, with the food or the clothing or the dialect, but she was making an effort, she wasn’t staring at everything like it was hopelessly foreign and beneath her to learn about, an expression that Eärwen had become well-versed in spotting after escorting some Vaniai nobles around Alqualondë. Eärwen thought that, if certain things had been different, Anairë could have come to regard Alqualondë in much the same light as she did Tirion. Eärwen… would have liked that very much, if she was being honest with herself—and as long as she was just thinking, not talking, why not be?

If things had been different.

As it was, there had been a few days when Anairë had seemed almost comfortable in Alqualondë. Eärwen had enjoyed those days, though she had been careful not to show too particular an enjoyment in it, not wanting to spoil it all by sparking Anairë’s curiosity or her suspicion about just _why_ Eärwen seemed to be enjoying so much the fact that Anairë was growing accustomed to Alqualondë. But then, after perhaps a week had passed, Eärwen had noticed a change come over her.

Nearly all of Alqualondë sat in the light that poured out of the Calacirya, though as the city had expanded, there had grown up some neighborhoods that sat entirely in the starry gloom outside the god and silver light that poured through the cleft in the mountains. It had seemed the most natural thing to do at the time, and not least because the Ñoldorin artisans and stonemasons who had come to them to help them build their city insisted that if they weren’t going to come within the mountains and bask fully in the light of the Trees, they should at least position their city in a place where they could _see_ that light. Though Alqualondë was distant enough from the Calacirya that the light of the Trees was no brighter than that of a particularly powerful lamp, the light was still present, and yes, it was beautiful.

The light was beautiful, but the way it spilled out of the Calacirya made Eärwen glad that Alqualondë was situated at such a distance from the cleft in the mountains. As it stood, she was perfectly content keeping that light at the level of a bright lamp, rather than having it brighten the sky and obscure her lovely stars. Not everyone shared her opinion. She knew that. If the Ñoldor and the Vaniai were so enamored of the stars as all that, they would have built settlements out on the coast as well, rather than solely fanning out into the lands lit up by the Trees, those settlements growing sparser and sparser the further south you went in the Blessed Realm.

Anairë was a child of the Blessed Realm. She had been born under light—the light of Ninquelótë, she had told Eärwen once, the Mingling just an hour off. She had been born under light, had spent the vast majority of her life under a light that was not fully extinguished even by the densest storm clouds, and if Eärwen had observed that many of the Ñoldor and Vaniai who had been born in the Blessed Realm showed discomfort when they were too far away from their beloved light, Anairë proved no different.

Ever since Eärwen had watched Anairë board the carriage back to Tirion after her first visit to Alqualondë concluded, Eärwen had wondered if the discomfort had truly only found her after a week. Anairë was so… decorous was not quite the word for it, decorous being rather too graceful to properly describe it. But Anairë had _notions_ , and hiding her discomfort over the gloom of her surroundings for as long as she could would have fit those notions to a tee.

Regardless of just when the discomfort had settled in her bones, it was after a week that it had first become apparent. Anairë did not say a word to her at first, but she’d not needed to. Eärwen had seen that same expression steal over the faces of visitors before, and by now, she knew full well what the taut jaw, tense shoulders, and darting, over-bright gaze that had overtook Anairë meant, even if Anairë did not tell her herself.

Well.

After a few days of trying to give Anairë some space, of trying to look for a way to broach the subject that would not prick at Anairë’s tender dignity, Eärwen had finally just thrown caution to the winds, and asked her outright.

And upon asking her outright, Anairë had just admitted it bluntly.

Well, there had been some embarrassment to that bluntness. Anairë, as it turned out, feared that it was sacrilegious to fear danger in the Blessed Realm, considering that the Valar had brought them all here specifically so that they could have a safe refuge from all of the dangers that beset them in Endóre. Not wishing to engage in sacrilege—her hair might be dark, but in some ways, she was very _much_ one of the Vaniai—Anairë had tried to ignore these feelings for as long as she could. After all, had Varda not created the stars? Varda _had_ created the stars, and she had created the stars for the enjoyment of the Eldar, to give them joy and comfort, and to shun those places where the stars were fully visible was like rejecting the stars themselves. Rejecting the stars was rejecting Varda, and rejecting Varda was—

Eärwen had gotten the gist, and had been quick to say so. There had been the particular harried gleam in Anairë’s eyes, the particular abstracted ramble to her words, the particular discordant tone to her voice, like the strings on a lute ever-so-slightly out of tune, that signaled that Anairë was on the verge of spiraling, and when you could see it coming in advance, it was better to cut her off before she could really get started, even if she glared at you for interrupting and spent the next several hours in a bit of a snit as a result.

Eärwen had gotten the gist. She appreciated that Anairë had tried to push down her discomfort for as long as she could, really, even if the reasons she appreciated it were not the same as the reasons that Anairë had suppressed her discomfort in the first place. She appreciated it, but her appreciation and Anairë’s own embarrassment and worries about offending those who were likely paying her absolutely no attention to be offended by anything she did did not erase the reality of the fact that Anairë was uncomfortable. She was uncomfortable, and the increasing length of her stay in the city was doing nothing to put her at ease. Quite the contrary: the longer Anairë was in Alqualondë, the more uncomfortable she became.

It was… That was just one of those things, about those Ellalië who were born in the Blessed Realm and born under the light of the Trees in particular. They’d always known that light, had been raised almost to worship it, and when they were away from it for too long…

That was then. Now, Eärwen was looking at Anairë looking out of the open window of their carriage, chin propped on her hand, elbow propped on the arm rest of her plush-cushioned bench, those few strands of long brown hair that were loose of her braid fluttering in the wind that found them here.

Actually, no. Eärwen was not looking at her, because ‘looking’ implied something far more casual than something she was doing. It would be better, righter, to say that Eärwen was watching Anairë looking out of the window of their carriage, chin propped on her hand, elbow propped on the arm rest, and as Anairë contemplated the countryside, Eärwen contemplated Anairë.

She was contemplating only one thing in particular. Eärwen’s mother spoke of acclimation, sometimes. She did not speak of acclimation in the same context as Eärwen was thinking of acclimation now. Thinking of acclimation, wondering how likely it was. Wondering about the ways acclimation’s absence could hamper or even kill enjoyment.

Anairë’s gaze drifted away from the window just enough, one pale blue eye lighting on Eärwen’s face. Never tearing her gaze completely away from the window, a single noise escaped through the miniscule gap in between her lips, “Hmm?”

“Nothing,” Eärwen assured her, though she could not quite bring herself to make her smile as full-bodied as it would have been to convince.

Not that that turned out to be necessary, in the end. Whatever had so absorbed Anairë’s thoughts absorbed them still, and she turned her attention fully back to staring out of the window. Perhaps she was weaving together words, words for those writings that she would never share with Eärwen, no matter how Eärwen asked (Though given that Anairë did not share her writings with _anyone_ , it had never felt much like an insult). Perhaps she was thinking of the stars, and new observations that she might like to make, even if she was drinking in the sight of them purely for her own gratification, rather than out of some astronomical pursuit. So long as Anairë still found the stars to be beautiful, so long as she could derive some happiness from looking upon them totally unobstructed in the velvety dark skies above Alqualondë, Eärwen was not picky regarding what, exactly, Anairë gained from staring up upon the stars.

Perhaps she was even looking forward to seeing Alqualondë again for its own sake. Eärwen had no idea if that was true. When Eärwen had asked Anairë what she had thought of Alqualondë, just as she was packing her things to return home after her first trip to the city of the Lindai, Anairë had been everything polite and diplomatic. She had remarked upon the most beautiful and enjoyable parts of the city without ever connecting those things to her own emotions. Anairë’s mother’s family was related in some way to the royal family of the Vaniai—the relationship was never made entirely clear to Eärwen, and Anairë could rarely be bothered to behave as if her kinship, however distant, to Ingwë and Indis and the siblings’ assortment of descendants, was something that mattered at all in the grand scheme of things, beyond the fact that it placed a special demand on her need to maintain her dignity—and Eärwen supposed that the kinship, however little attention Anairë might draw to it, had to out in some ways. That way being the need to avoid giving offense, and mask her own feelings, when it came to the beauty and the bliss of the Blessed Realm.

So yes, Eärwen really did have no idea just what Anairë felt of Alqualondë on an emotional level. She could hope, though, and among the things she hoped, the hope that Anairë would have enjoyed her time there enough to wish to return to it, even if the darkness that stretched across the lands outside of the Pelóri engendered in her anxiety after long enough spent there was perhaps highest among them. Eärwen could even hope, as outlandish and unlikely as it might have been, that perhaps Anairë’s anxiety of the gloom and shadows of Alqualondë outside of its multitude of lamps would be lesser, now that she was more familiar with it. She would like that. She would like that for many reasons, and though hopes for Anairë’s comfort were not least among them, they were not the only reasons. Not the only reasons at all.

Well, they were on the road, now. There was no peril on any road in the Blessed Realm that Eärwen knew of—even in the distant reaches of the south, where the animals were more aggressive in the absence of enough Ellalië to make them more friendly, or at least more docile, there were still wandering Maiar who would respond quickly to any sounds of distress from either animals _or_ Ellalië (though given that these Maiar were chiefly Maiar of Yavanna, Oromë, and Nessa, Eärwen suspected that the animals _might_ have been given the higher priority), and thus, there was little danger, even there. The roads were so safe that only the weather could even conceive of disrupting the plans of travelers, and the weather… was not quite what it had been in Endóre. It was more docile, less wild and untamed. And there were times when Eärwen missed the sorts of storms that could sweep in from the Sea, if only because her life felt strangely lesser for their lack, but for the most part, she remembered more clearly the destruction they had wrought, and did not miss them at all.

They were on the road, and the road was safe. The season was such that they could not expect to encounter any snow, and any rains that joined them on the road to Alqualondë would be mild showers, rather than violent storms. The road was safe, never haunted by any bandits or others who might mean travelers ill. The only time the carriage would stop would be for its driver and inhabitants to sleep, either in an inn, or under the stars themselves. The only peril that could arise from that was the potential for Anairë to hurt her back sleeping on the ground—oh, Anairë had said nothing of it the last time they had traveled to Alqualondë together, but Eärwen only had to look at her when they got up just after the Mingling and look at her wan, taut face, to tell that Anairë vehemently preferred a bed to a pallet upon the ground for sleeping on. (Eärwen had made sure that the mattress on Anairë’s bed in her assigned guest room was as soft and plush as possible, and paused only a moment to contemplate whether or not Anairë would respond well to a _companion_ upon that—)

At this time of year, at best speed, they could expect to be in Alqualondë in perhaps a week—sooner, if the horses did not tire out too badly. And for the whole time, Eärwen thought her thoughts would be well-occupied, even if they did not dwell on the Festival of Shells quite as much as one might have thought.

-0-0-0-

Eärwen’s hopes regarding the journey had proven well-founded, for it was on the sixth day, rather than the seventh, that, having passed out of the Calacirya and left the greater part of eternal light behind them, another light began to show itself out of the starry gloom of the shores of the Blessed Realm.

A little egotistical to say so, perhaps, but it was not a sight that Eärwen ever grew tired of. The eternal light of Culúrien and Ninquelótë was great and good and glad, certainly, but were that light to spill so far out of the Calacirya to touch Alqualondë more than remotely, Eärwen thought that it would rather spoil the beauty of the city. The beauty of Alqualondë was meant to be reflected primarily by starlight and lamplight. Though it could stand the faint gilding of the gold and silver light that filtered out of the gap in the mountains, it was not designed for every corner of its stony and jeweled and wooden body to be painted gold and silver and periodically both.

The way the road ran, the carriage would for run for many miles out of the Calacirya east, and then north, then east again, as the landscape grew such that a straight road was no longer possible. At the moment, they were riding down the road in such a way that the two carriage windows showed north and south, rather than east and west, which suited Eärwen just fine, as being able to look north out of the carriage at this very moment gave her the very first sight of the city she now called home.

It appeared first as a dull glimmer on the horizon. It was difficult to make out past the beams of gold and silver Treelight that glittered in the air around the carriage, though as they slowly moved further east, those beams would grow fainter, until finally they were such that though they could light up what they touched, they could not compare to or compete with the many colored lamps that were strung up all over Alqualondë. And when those beams of light had first begun to grow dim, that was when it first began to make out the glimmers of light and light reflecting off of polished surfaces that had nothing at all to do with those trees most beloved of the Valar.

Alqualondë was the youngest of the three great cities of the Ellalië in the Blessed Realm, though given that Valmar was a city of the Ainur first, Eärwen sometimes wondered if the Vaniai’s residence even counted—though, given that Eärwen was to understand that all of the bells and colored glass were added on _by_ the Vaniai, and that many of the other things about the city of the Valar that seemed even remotely like what Eärwen would expect from a city occupied by Ellalië were added on by the Vaniai as well, perhaps Valmar did count after all, since the Vaniai seemed to be getting more use out of it than the Ainur themselves. Eärwen had gotten a little away from herself, though considering how silly and borderline-ridiculous the Vaniai were, at least in her eyes (and yes, she was aware that many of the Vaniai considered the Lindai rather more than simply _ridiculous_ , and not least because of the Lindai’s attitude towards _them_ ), she thought she could be excused. As she was saying Alqualondë was the youngest of the three great cities of the Ellalië in this Blessed Realm, and yet, it was the great city of the Ellalië most exposed to the most brutal weather conditions that the Blessed Realm had to offer.

Though the city proper was set back a ways from the water itself, enough so that they did not have to worry about Alqualondë ever falling _into_ the Sea (though Eärwen would admit, the reassurances of Uinen and _especially_ Ossë regarding this had reassured her a little more than the word of the Ñoldorin architects regarding the sturdiness of the city and its foundations), it was still a city located on the shoreline. When the Sea stirred up its maelstroms, when squalls came down out of the frozen north, there was little that could shield Alqualondë from the full brunt of their wrath, for the way the Pelóri was shaped, the mountains were unlikely to break up the storms. Ossë and Uinen and their kin would break up any storms that they thought might be utterly ruinous to the city, but for anything short of that, they would not intervene. _You already know how to survive these things_ , they had once said to Olwë, once long ago when the city was newly-wrought and the Ñoldorin architects newly returned to their own home. _You already know how to survive these things, and we will not take that knowledge from you. It is yours, and not ours to decide how to parcel out as we will. The storms will come. What you do about them is up to you._

Alqualondë the city looked older than Tirion upon Túna. Eärwen remembered traveling to Tirion for the first time, and being irresistibly struck by how much younger Tirion seemed to her eyes than her own city, despite the fact that Alqualondë was at the time only fifteen years old and Tirion was decades older than that. The storms that ruled over the Sea were such that though they could batter and harry the coastline seemingly without end, by the time they reached the city in the midst of the Calacirya, if they could even get that far at all, they were little more than stubborn showers where the thunder that rolled overhead was a faint, distant grumble, rather than a roar that made all of Eärwen’s bones rattle in her body and her teeth clamor in her mouth. Those were the storms that assailed Alqualondë, and they had an effect.

Tirion was not pristine, not exactly. If you wished for a great city that was totally pristine, that looked for all the world as though it had never been lived in, even though it was where nearly all of the Vaniai lived, you should go instead to Valmar. Eärwen could only assume that either the Vaniai or some of the lesser Maiar were engaged in cleaning on a nearly constant basis. It was the only thing that would explain why, in her rare visits to Valmar, she never saw so much as a single piece of trash, or a single clod of dirt fallen from a flowerpot. The only thing that explained that would be if there was some sort of mandate that every last bit of trash or detritus had to be cleaned up immediately in this city of the Ainur, and Eärwen could not decide if this was a mandate more likely to have come from either the Ainur or the Vaniai; it did not seem like Ingwë to burden his people so with such a mandate, even if his reverence for the Valar was likely greater than that of nearly every member of the Ellalië, and Eärwen was not certain how much the Ainur even cared about physical cleanliness, let alone if they cared enough about it to make a rule that the places where they lived had to be spotlessly clean at all times..

Compared to Valmar, Tirion was… still not filthy, because even if Valmar was so clean that it seemed like a place where no one had lived and sometimes like a place where no one ever could live, it would take a lot more than the simple untidiness of a place that actually _seemed_ lived-in to seem filthy compared to that. As Eärwen had said, Tirion was a clean city, but it was a city that did not seem to be obsessively cleaned, over and over again every day until every last bit of flotsam that stood as the testament to lives that were lived too quickly to stop to pick up every last bit of trash or detritus. Eärwen had walked the streets of Tirion and seen dead leaves rattling on the flagstones like the desiccated shell of the changing season. She had seen patches of snow and ice glittering on the flagstones like starlight absorbed into frozen water. She had walked by blacksmiths’ forges and seen soot spotting the windowsills, seen bits and pieces of broken metal clustering around the doorways like supplicants seeking an audience with the one being who could make them whole. She had seen dust on the tables in the halls of Finwë the king.

Tirion was pleasant for a spell, even if the light was a little overpowering even from the start. It was a place where Eärwen could more easily live than in Valmar, for beautiful as Valmar was—objectively-speaking, it was probably the most beautiful city in the Blessed Realm, even if Eärwen’s own biases led her towards another answer—Tirion seemed considerably less like a place where, if Eärwen smudged a window by putting her finger on it, someone would come up right behind her with a rag and a bucket of soapy water.

Valmar and Tirion both seemed so young, and Eärwen knew that that had a little more to do with their pristineness, their cleanliness.

By contrast, Alqualondë reflected every last one of its years. The Sea and its storms had had little mercy upon the city; Ossë would break those storms that he thought violent enough to destroy the city and kill those who lived inside, but as he had said, the rest was up to the Lindai. And as of yet, though mariners were occasionally killed on the Sea if a storm came up upon them too quickly for them to make for shore or for calmer waters, and those mariners were mourned and their release from the Doomsman’s halls was greatly anticipated, no one present in Alqualondë itself, or in the settlements on Tol Eressëa, had died during a storm. The measures they had put into place had ensured that no one would die during the worst of the storms.

But though there had blessedly (perhaps unsurprising, considering the power of this Blessed Realm) been no deaths in Alqualondë that could be attributed to the fury of the storms, the city itself bore its scars from the assaults. The patchwork of different architectural styles could be attributed to the number of times houses had needed to be torn down and rebuilt after a storm. The beaches scattered with pearls and precious gems did have some basis in the Lindai’s desire to make their beaches as beautiful as possible, and the Ñoldor’s willingness to aid them in such a pursuit, but it spoke also to the power the wind and driving rain had to dislodge pearls and precious gems from their proper places in the exterior walls of people’s homes and the exterior walls of the public buildings of the city.

Her father’s tower had never come tumbling down under the force of even the strongest of the gales Ossë refused to break up for their benefit. The Ñoldor had constructed it, and they had specifically constructed it to withstand every last thing that nature could throw at it. The tower had never sustained any serious damage from a storm, even a storm that saw them rebuilding the homes of certain of their people. That did not mean it had sustained any damage at all.

Olwë was not interested in having a fresh coat of paint applied. Finwë had asked him about it in a hushed tone the last time he had visited Alqualondë, but Eärwen had watched her father simply shrug his shoulders and smile and say that the patterns left behind on the stone were not something that he wished to paint over. The world had given them to him, and he found them beautiful, and even if the naked stone was exposed beneath in places, not everything could be perfect.

No, not everything could be perfect, not even in this Blessed Realm. And such was plain even at this distance from Alqualondë. The colors of the lamps that shone in the gloomy distance were not uniform; pink and golden were favored this season, but there were some stubborn residents who had held on to the purple and silver lamps from last season, and those who would cling always to their lamps with multi-colored glass panels, those who did not want to restrict themselves to just one or two colors. Soon enough, they would draw close enough to Alqualondë that it would be possible to make out the swirls on the body of the Tower of Olwë. Just a few hours after that, they would pass under the arch, where Eärwen knew that someone had been painting a new mural overtop of the old one, and were still applying coat after coat of paint to try and cover up the shapes of the old mural, but those shapes were still perfectly visible if you squinted not even that hard.

It was home. It did not have to be perfect. Eärwen thought she would have loved it less if it had been perfect, for perfection was not a place where you could live—not a place where _she_ could live, certainly. She was grateful every day to have a father who shared that opinion.

But she did wonder, sometimes, at Anairë’s opinions on what many could and no doubt _did_ consider the ramshackle nature of Alqualondë. Anairë had never spoken about it thusly, and Eärwen thought it might be easier to pry teeth from her unwilling mouth than it would be to get her to give an opinion on what she thought of the patchwork nature of Alqualondë to Alqualondë’s own princess. Most likely, Eärwen would never hear from Anairë what she thought of it. But she did wonder, sometimes. Sometimes, she wondered a great deal.

In this moment, when Eärwen tore her gaze away from the window, she saw that Anairë was looking up from one of the books she had brought along to read while they were on the road, eyes intent upon exactly that which Eärwen had just now been staring at.

Eärwen offered her a coaxing smile, hoping it would not seem too obviously coaxing. “You seem quite entranced upon the sight of Alqualondë, Anairë.”

Anairë’s face colored faintly, and Eärwen was momentarily dismayed, worrying that she had stepped on some tender nerve whose existence she had previously been unaware of, but just as soon as Anairë’s face had colored, she had explained herself, voice only slightly rushed, “The first time I traveled here, when I began to draw close to the city, I thought at first that the stars of the sky had congregated on the shoreline. And _yes_ , I know that is a ridiculous thought; there is no need to remind me of such.”

Eärwen had had no intention of telling her she thought it ridiculous. Indeed, Eärwen though she had felt her smile turn just a little soppy at the admission. But she would not tell Anairë that. It would only put Anairë to silence, even more quickly than calling her ridiculous would have achieved, for at least with the latter, Anairë might consider herself roused to argue the point, if only out of stubbornness. She only shrugged her shoulders and fixed the quality of her smile back to something that was encouraging, rather than coaxing or _especially_ soppy.

Anairë rolled her shoulders, the soft, lightweight linen of her traveling clothes rustling like the whispers of her own thoughts. “It _is_ a ridiculous thought, no matter what you might say to comfort me.” And that was only a further confirmation of how she would have dug in her heels and argued the point, had it come from Eärwen’s mouth instead. “But it was not one that I was able to shake. I cannot imagine that Elentári would construct her stars in such a way as to allow them to fall from the sky, let alone to allow them to _travel_ ; that would be wretchedly confusing for the mariners of your people, would it not?”

“The star-maps are not their only means of navigating the waters,” Eärwen explained, “but yes, things would be considerably more difficult if the stars could simply change position in the sky without rhyme or reason. But go on, Anairë; I’d like to hear what you thought, no matter how ridiculous _you_ might think it.”

Anairë raised an eyebrow in consideration, scouring Eärwen’s face for any sign of laughter or derision, though Eärwen hoped she would know by now that she could expect to find none of the latter. After a while, she settled a little more comfortably back into her seat, folding her hands nearly on her lap. “I wonder. But ah, you will not leave it alone until I tell you, will you?”

“You would do the same, if it was me.”

A strange sound, a cross between a huff and a noise like the wind whistling through a gap in a stone wall, escaped Anairë’s mouth. But there was a light twinkling in her eyes that had nothing to do with offense. “True enough, true enough. Let me tell you, then, and just trust that you will not repeat the story to those little hellions you call your brothers.”

“I might take offense at that comment, but I’ve met some of your sisters, and I think your tolerance for mischief might be just a _little_ low, Anairë.”

“The lights.” Anairë’s smile was a little sharp, but only a little. “I was speaking of the lights. If we compared notes on our younger siblings, we would still be at it by the time they were dropping us off in front of the palace.” She drew a deep breath through her nose, steadying herself, then a deep breath through her mouth, quieting her breath.

Eärwen had watched her do such many times, waited with a giddy anticipation for the smooth, almost velvety quality of her voice that would surely follow after. And sure enough:

“When I came here that last time, I saw the lights of Alqualondë before I saw the city itself.”

If the idea made Anairë less apprehensive than it did, then Eärwen might try anew to convince her to take up a profession as a public speaker of some sort. Her voice was not made for the fiery, _loud_ passion of speeches, but a storyteller, perhaps? Or one who read out the long narrative poems composed by the greatest poets of Tirion and Valmar, and perhaps Alqualondë in time, if Eärwen could persuade her towards a greater liking of the styles of the Lindai? A voice that could so quickly turn brittle in normal discourse with others, a voice that Eärwen had never heard lift into song thanks to Anairë’s own protests that her singing voice was of a kind that could only offer insult to whatever she sang about, and she would rather not blaspheme by mangling a hymn to Varda Elentári, most beloved of Anairë’s personal pantheon, and find eternal disfavor in Elentári’s eyes.

A voice like that, and yet, when Anairë turned to telling a story, either by reading out of a book or just out of her own memory, that voice which could turn so quickly to brittleness instead grew smooth and supple, as rich as any sweet, mulled wine that had ever touched Eärwen’s lips. It was the sort of voice that you could sit listening to for hours, entranced. Eärwen _had_ done, more than once, until the tale was done and the spell was broken, and Anairë blinked and realized how much time had passed and she cleared her throat and her pale face reddened and she began to mutter about how, surely, Eärwen had had things she needed to do, surely she was in Tirion for a purpose and the princess of the Falmari could not really enjoy sitting around all day listening to Anairë talk.

One day, Eärwen would convince Anairë that when it came to her storytelling, Eärwen could sit at her knee and listen until the stars truly fell from the sky, and it would make no difference to her. One day.

There was something else there when Anairë told her stories, something Eärwen could not help but mark, though she was not certain that even Anairë knew of it. Eärwen did not always shut her eyes and let the stories carry her away, though she’d done that often enough; it was easy, once Anairë had truly gotten started, and there were times when Eärwen had to force her eyes to stay open. But when Eärwen could force herself to keep her eyes open and watch, when she could find it in herself not to lose herself too deeply in the rhythm and the ebbs and flows of Anairë’s reading, she would watch something spark in Anairë’s pale blue eyes. Anairë would no doubt deny it if asked, but Eärwen could name it nothing but pleasure. Pleasure at reading, pleasure at being able to follow the cadence of a stanza so well, but Eärwen would not hear otherwise but to say that there was pleasure there just for the sake of it. Pleasure just for the sake of it, and pleasure taken in the power of her own voice, a power that did not manifest under other circumstances.

The pleasure, Eärwen thought, was warranted, even if Anairë would not acknowledge it. The pleasure would be warranted even if Anairë’s voice when she read out a story or a poem was not so intensely pleasurable to listen to. If she could convince Anairë of that someday, she thought she might be able to live the rest of her life in perfect contentment. For now, she must derive a lesser, imperfect contentment from listening to that voice resonate in storytelling, from being swept away in the ebb and flow, and know that there would come a day when she could convince Anairë of her own voice’s sweetness.

“When I saw those lights,” Anairë went on, running her fingers through her hair, letting it slip out almost listlessly, “I did not at once recognize them for what they were. I will confess that I had not devoted as much of my attention as I should have to learning just how long the road between Tirion and Alqualondë would be. I did not know when to expect the city to come into view, and I had thought that the road would be longer.” She blinked, grimacing. “In my defense, the road from Tirion to Valmar is longer by far than the road from Tirion to Alqualondë. I had thought that I would be experiencing a journey much like that one. I had packed accordingly. You remember, no doubt.”

Eärwen did remember. In particular, she remembered the way the porters had muttered when they saw how many chests they would have to transport to Anairë’s assigned guest quartering in the palace. But out of fear of derailing the story, or of making Anairë clam up altogether, she merely nodded.

Anairë pressed her fingertips to her brow. “When I first saw the city appear on the horizon, I saw the lights first, and I did not think to connect them to the city itself. Tirion and Valmar have lamps, of course—the light when Telperion shines is not always strong enough to illuminate the streets, especially if storm clouds come in especially dark and low, and we will still need lamps to light our way in such times. But they are not so numerous as what is required outside of the Calacirya, and I was not prepared.

“I saw it,” she said softly, her voice turning from velvet to something more like satin, something endlessly inviting with no chance that it would ever start to grate if rubbed against the grain, “and I did not know those lights for what they were. I saw those lights through the darkness of endless night and the mist coming off of the Sea, and in my confusion I thought them to be stars. Outside the cradle of the Pelóri, I had never gone, and beyond it, anything seemed possible. Why should it not be possible that the stars could come down from the sky and congregate with the children of the Eldar? Is it not said that giant Spiders haunt the shores of Avathar? For the stars to climb down from the sky and mingle with the Eldar seemed hardly any more outlandish than that.” Her gaze sharpened, and she drew a deep breath through her nose, and her voice was back to its normal timbre during normal discourse as she remarked, “But I learned my mistake soon enough.” She offered Eärwen a faint, almost tremulous smile. “Tell me, Eärwen—are the lamps of Alqualondë as beautiful as I remember?”

Eärwen felt her heart flutter, just a little bit. She pushed it down—a carriage was not an appropriate place for it—and instead nodded to the window. “You can see for yourself soon enough. We’re almost there.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Avathar** —‘The Shadows’ (adapted from Valarin; the name isn’t derived from Quenya, or any other Elvish language); a land in the southeast of Aman, located at the feet of the Pelóri on the shore of the Great Sea south of the Bay of Eldamar. Much of the land was eroded away by the Sea, leaving a narrow strip of shoreline. There dwelled Ungoliant before the years of the Sun and the Moon; she had taken the form of a Spider, devoured all light that touched the land, and woven dark webs.  
>  **Calacirya** —“Cleft of Light” (Quenya); a mountain pass in the Pelóri, in which was located the hill of Túna and the city of Tirion. It is mentioned that the Calacirya was “made” in the same year that the Vanyar and Ñoldor first reached Aman, suggesting that it was created by one or several of the Valar in order to allow the Elves into Aman without having to cross the Pelóri. After the hiding of Valinor when the Pelóri Mountains were raised higher, the Calacirya was the only gap left in the mountains, left there because the Elves still needed to breathe the air brought by the wind over the sea from Middle-Earth where they were born, and because this would have left the Falmari completely isolated from the Vanyar and the Ñoldor (No mention is made of what would have become of the remaining Ñoldor, considering that their city was located within the Calacirya).  
>  **Culúrien** —an alternate name for Laurelin, the younger of the Two Trees of Valinor.  
>  **Eldar—** ‘People of the Stars’ (Quenya); a name first given to the Elves by Oromë when he found them by Cuiviénen, but later came to refer only to those who answered the summons to Aman and set out on the March, with those who chose to remain by Cuiviénen coming to be known as the Avari; the Eldar were composed of these groups: the Vanyar, Ñoldor (those among them who chose to go to Aman), and the Teleri (including their divisions: the Lindar, Falmari, Sindar and Nandor).  
>  **Ellalië** —the Telerin form of 'Eldalië'; 'the Elven-Folk', usually a term used to refer to all of the Elves, though generally someone speaking of the Eldalië is not referring to the Avari.  
>  **Endóre** —Middle-Earth (Quenya)  
>  **Falmari** —those among the Teleri who completed the journey to Aman; the name is derived from the Quenya falma, '[crested] wave.'  
>  **Lindai** —an old clan-name for the Lindar, the name the Nelyar used to refer to themselves, which means ‘Singers’ (Telerin)  
>  **Ninquelótë** —‘White Blossom’ (Quenya); one of the many names given to Telperion. It is likely that this name was widely used among the Teleri of Aman, considering that the Númenóreans received their white tree, Nimloth, from the Elves of Tol Eressëa, and Nimloth is the Sindarin equivalent of the Quenya ‘Ninquelótë.’  
>  **Quendya** —Quendya, known also as Vanyarin Quenya, is the dialect of Quenya spoken by the Vanyar of Aman. The Quenya spoken by the Vanyar and the Ñoldor broke off into two different dialects after the Vanyar largely forsook Tirion to live closer to the Valar. Quendya was the more conservative of the two dialects, more resistant to change and evolution, and contained more loanwords from Valarin than the Quenya spoken by the Ñoldor.  
>  **Vaniai** —the Telerin Quenya equivalent of 'Vanyar'


	3. Chapter Three

There was considerably less muttering from the porters this time as Anairë’s things were carted off to her assigned guest quartering, though that would not have been difficult, and _would_ have been unexpected. You would be amazed at how much more sensible Anairë’s packing became, when she actually knew how much she _needed_ to be packing.

Eärwen spared a moment—a long moment, as it turned out—to wonder how much she had brought in the way of clothes. The Lindai clothing Anairë had worn during her last trip here had been given to her as a gift. Had she kept them, rather than throwing them out or giving them away as soon as she returned to Tirion? Had she packed them away for this trip, and had simply not wished to be seen wearing them anywhere the clothing of the Lindai tended to draw comment, and unless it was worn by one with starry silver hair, not especially positive comment, either? Eärwen had already planned to make a gift of a few sets of clothing for her stay here, considering that the season was different and that festival clothes were _really_ not the same thing as clothes you wore around the city every day of your life, but curiosity and wonder and longing gripped her all the same.

_I feel as if a girl again. That should be the least of my worries, and yet…_

Anairë stood in the center of the room, her trunks and chests holding court around her, hanging on her every word. She had no true eyes for them, however; instead, her eyes, once she had ascertained that all of her trunks had made it to her guest quarters unscathed, snapped to Eärwen’s form where she stood in the doorway, out of the way but still ready to come in and help if called upon. “When is the festival supposed to be? Tomorrow?”

“The day after tomorrow,” Eärwen clarified. “I… I suppose you will wish to read, or to write, until that time comes?”

It was how Anairë spent most of her spare time, after all, and while Eärwen had hoped they would get here a little early, so that Anairë could at least settle herself a bit before they went out into the festival itself, she’d not anticipated getting here _this_ early. She knew that one of the chests carried up here had contained books; she could hear them shifting around in the chest all the way here, and Anairë had been pulling her reading material in the carriage out of somewhere. But there was something else Eärwen hoped for, something she didn’t want to give a name to, lest she ill-wish it and cause it never to come to pass.

“A little bit, at least,” Anairë conceded, shrugging her shoulders diffidently. “But that was not _all_ I wished to come here to do. Even I must take breaks from my studies eventually, though I do try to go as long as I can.”

The devout could do no less, Eärwen supposed, with the casual reticence of one who was on speaking terms with Maiar and rarely gave much thought to any of the Valar, save Ulmo. But there was a little spark of hope stuttering in her heart as she asked, “And what was it that you wanted to do?”

The quickest path from the palace to the beaches that were soft white sand fit to tread upon without shoes (just be wary of any broken shells, raw gemstones, or gemstones that had been cut to have sharp edges) would take Eärwen and Anairë through one of the mercantile sections of Alqualondë, the one closest to the shoreline, and that walk would take them about fifteen minutes. However, though the festival would not begin until the day after tomorrow, Eärwen knew from past experience (and her own duties in helping to oversee the preparations—though she had begged off the greater part of her duties this year, that did not mean there were not still duties to be had) that the vendors would already be setting up their displays. Not until tomorrow would the city become fragrant with the sweet, earthy aroma of slowly-baking pastries, a scent so strong that until winds blew in from the east and the south, it was possible to forget the smell of the Sea altogether, but there were many things that would already be set out, things that would not spoil out in the open, things that seagulls would not descend upon to eat if they were set out. Theft had never been a problem, not for as long as Eärwen could remember, and thus, the vendors thought nothing of leaving their wares out.

Eärwen did not wish for Anairë to see any of it. Not yet. Not before it was ready.

This being Alqualondë, and the Lindai, and the Sea, there was more than one path from the palace to the beaches. The one Eärwen had chosen took them through a residential area abutting the stone pathway and low stone wall separating this part of the city from the beach—the dunes took a sudden steep turn here, and before the wall was put up, there had been a few incidents of small children getting away from their minders and hurting themselves taking a tumble down the dunes which no one wished to see escalate from bruises and sprained ankles into broken necks. This walk was close to half an hour when taken at a brisk pace. For two women who were in no hurry, for one who was pleasingly drinking in her surroundings with interest, add another fifteen.

“I’ve never been to this part of Alqualondë before,” Anairë remarked—not truly necessary, considering she had gone nowhere without Eärwen the last time she had been here, but still full of curiosity, regardless of the lack of necessity. “The architecture here is much more different from Tirion than the other parts of the city I have seen.”

Eärwen looked around her, at the dome-shaped houses on either side of the gloomy path they were walking down, and wondered how to explain this to someone who had never experienced a storm more intense than the admittedly heavy, but still markedly tranquil downpours in Tirion. She supposed it would have been too much to ask that Anairë stay abreast of property damage in Alqualondë. “There came occasion for us to try our own hand at building,” Eärwen said carefully.

Anairë blinked without any true comprehension. “Expansion? But I can see past the other side of the hill—“ she nodded to the steep decline to their south, where the houses were the blocky, flat-roofed creatures you saw often in Tirion, if devoid of much of the frippery with which the Ñoldor adorned their homes “—and that must surely have been built later.”

Eärwen nodded, humming in the back of her throat for want of something to say. When finally she found something, she settled on the simple, “It was.”

If Anairë left off at that, if she chose not to follow the thread to its source, Eärwen would be content to let the thread peter off into nothingness. She wasn’t certain how to assuage the fears that would no doubt crop up when Eärwen told her what the worst of storms could do, even here on the shores of such a blissful place. Even some of her own people had moved further inland after enough battering; how could a child of the Calacirya, a woman who had for the vast majority of her life known nothing but light and peace be expected to bear such news better than them?

This was Anairë Eärwen was speaking of, and of course Anairë did not let the thread drop. “Why?” Anairë pressed her, lips thinning in a frown. “Was there a fire?” She looked around at the houses with sudden unease. “I can’t imagine a fire would spread far enough or fast enough to destroy so many houses, not _here_.”

“It wasn’t a fire, Anairë.” Better not to let her find out from someone else, later, for knowing Anairë, if Eärwen did not give her the answers she sought, she’d go seeking them somewhere else—very much a child of the Vaniai in some ways, and even more a child of the Ñoldor in others. Eärwen offered her a smile, knowing that it wouldn’t help, but hoping that it would be a cushion, if only a small cushion. “Great storms brew on the Sea, and many of them live and die on the water, but some find their way here and break on the mountains. All storms break in time, but some have the chance to do damage to the city on the way to their breaking.”

And Anairë drew back, just as Eärwen had expected, mouth forming a soft, pink circle of horror, as Eärwen had expected, just… not quite as _much_ as Eärwen had expected. “And the Ainur do not stop it?”

It should have been easy for Eärwen to appear unconcerned. After all, for the most part, she _was_ unconcerned. It was only in the aftermath of one of these storms, when the surface of the sea bristled with broken wood and they searched for the missing, for those who had not yet been accounted for, that she was concerned. “This world cannot be tampered with more than what is absolutely necessary,” she told Anairë, as Ossë had once told her. “To do as Melkor did in his rebellion would be to do violence to the world, and to inevitably unravel it. If in small ways at first, the world would still unravel the way a scarf unravels if you leave it exposed to the wind and snagging branches for too long. But we are more resilient than that which would break if tampered with too much, so we endure.”

Eärwen nodded to the houses that surrounded them in their walk. The most recent one they had walked by, a man with the weather-beaten look of a sailor was sitting on the front stoop. He gave her a salute, and she smiled crookedly in return. She shrugged. “We endure, and we rebuild. We found that this design was one that a storm had a harder time breaking.”

Anairë pursed her lips, staring dubiously around, as if seeing the houses for the first time. “That’s interesting,” she muttered, “since they look just like eggs, fit to be cracked open by any child with a sufficiently large spoon. But you would know better these things, and if you have not left, and your father has not bid his people to leave, I…” As they passed a lit window, Eärwen could see her chewing on the inside of her cheek. “…I suppose that it must be safe to remain. That said—“

She raised an eyebrow, trying for a smile. It was visibly faint, trying to wilt into nothingness even as she forced it onto her lips, but it was a gesture, and Eärwen recognized it for what it was. “That said,” Anairë told her wryly, “you’re braver than I thought.”

Eärwen was startled. She could not help it. She was startled, and thus, she laughed. “I’ll take that as a compliment.”

Anairë sniffed. “I cannot control how you take it. I am not certain how I _meant_ it, so I certainly cannot control how you choose to take it.”

“And thus, you cannot stop me from taking it as a compliment. I shall treasure it always.”

Perhaps in the interest of steering the conversation away from such things, be they Eärwen’s smirking face or her own fears, Anairë commented on something else that she had been noticing while they were walking through this neighborhood. “There are no lamps in this part of the city that I have seen, at least none outside of people’s homes. I see light spilling out from windows, but only so much, even there. Why is that?” she asked, her frown no longer dubious so much as it was just curious. “I should think that the Falmari would wish for all of their streets to be well-lit, when Laurelin and Telperion—“ and here she nodded to the gold light very faintly gilding the rooftops “—can do so little this far past the Calacirya.”

And here, Eärwen was on firmer ground, for here, she had a question which she could answer without fear of Anairë responding too poorly. “Sea turtles lay their eggs in the beaches around Alqualondë—not too close to the quays, though we have had to encourage them away from the quays in years past.” Not without help from some of the Maiar they had enlisted, though Eärwen would not be mentioning that, as in the end all they had done was physically pick the eggs up and move them; if the Ellalië could have done the same delicately enough to avoid damaging them, they would have done the same in a heartbeat. “This is around the time of year for the eggs to begin hatching and the hatchlings to take to the Sea.”

“And what does that have to do with the lamps by which your people navigate the city?”

Eärwen grimaced. She did not fear Anairë’s reaction, not truly, but here her memories led her somewhere she would have been happier not to tread again. “When… When there are too many lights coming from further up the shore, that confuses the hatchlings. They are supposed to go out to Sea, but when they hatch to find the streets above them well-lit, they have been known to come up here, instead, and—“

Somewhere on a street past the row of houses to their right, a wagon trundled on, its wheels rattling against the flagstones. Eärwen thanked it silently for acting as a prop, for once Anairë paused to listen to those rattling wagon wheels, she made a face and replied, “Yes, I can see how that might be a problem.”

“It was a problem we wished to avoid. Thus, there are no street lamps in this part of Alqualondë during the hatching times.”

“Dead baby sea turtles is one of the most depressing things I have ever heard of,” Anairë declared, almost as if Eärwen had not spoken. “And I have been through the records for the local jail in my district. Those turtles have serious competition.”

The rest of the walk, they passed in silence, though not an uncompanionable silence, which Eärwen had honestly feared after she had explained the differing architectural styles to Anairë. Perhaps she had been underestimating Anairë—no, she _had_ been underestimating Anairë, she had expected Anairë to take that much worse than she had, but Anairë had not responded to the news in any of the number of ways in which she could have. Some disbelief, some gesticulating towards the Ainur, that was downright restrained considering the ways Eärwen had known some of the other Ñoldor and Vaniai to respond when first _they_ learned of why the architectural styles in Alqualondë could be such a hodgepodge. It was an encouraging sign, Eärwen could hardly deny that.

The rebuilt houses were all quite new, though Anairë had no way of knowing that. Only twenty years old, and Eärwen could well remember the trepidation painting her mother’s face and the uncertainty churning in her own gut when that trio of young architects had come to the royal family with designs for buildings more resistant to the fury of wind and the battering assaults of rain. Thus, the design had been intended, and if there was uncertainty in her gut and trepidation on her mother’s face, Eärwen knew that to be nothing compared to the stone-cold terror that gripped the architects as Olwë approved their designs and set about to ensuring that they would be built. At least one of them, Eärwen had been surprised not to watch faint on the spot.

If things had gone wrong, if the designs the architects had promised would be more resistant to the depredations of the weather had instead proven to be, as Anairë had described, nothing more than giant eggs waiting for the right storm to tap a spoon on their shells, well…

They could not have been worried about being killed, either by their king’s order or by some markedly rougher form of justice. The Ellalië had left such things far behind them in Endóre, and even then, execution had been reserved only for the most terrible of crimes, things which by necessity must have _malice_ attached to them. No, execution would have been entirely out of the question, and death at the hands of the mob just as much so.

What the architects were likely to have been more worried about was being run out of town and never seeing their families again, since their families would likely have been too ashamed to associate with them again. Considering that, if she had had to pull even one bloated corpse out of the water as a result of shoddy building design, Eärwen herself would have been leading the charge, those concerns were only prudent.

There had never come the need to run anyone out of town, at least as far as the designs of these new houses were concerned. They had been as sure as silver, and the next time the Ñoldor-designed buildings in the city were affected badly enough to warrant tearing down, the design of those buildings raised in their place would most likely mirror the houses Eärwen looked upon now.

Only twenty years, and the houses in this part of the city looked, aside from their differing shape, as if they had been here as long as all the buildings that surrounded them. Once the houses had been built up as far as they could and occupancy was approved, the residents had wasted no time painting the exterior walls of their houses, at least as high up as they could reach, for those who did not have ladders that could reach the tip of the dome, and did not know anyone they could borrow those ladders from. The walls of the houses were adorned with images of flowers and ocean waves and sea turtles and starfish, sea shells and pearls and swans. Most of the windowsills had some sort of potted plant in them—these past few years, the succulents that grew close to the Girdle of Arda were favored for how sturdy they were, for how they could go days without water, for the colors and shapes in which they came.

It was as Ossë had said to them. The Ellalië were sturdier, more resilient, than the fabric of the world as it had been woven into the shape it now bore.

(So why was it that the Valar had insisted that they all make the journey to this Blessed Realm, rather than remaining in the lands where they had first awoken beneath the stars? Why was it that they insisted that the Ellalië must come to a safer place, a place where there was no real risk to life in the land that they tilled and built upon? These were questions that Eärwen asked herself, from time to time. When she lied down in her bed and dreamed of the lands she had left behind, she asked herself those questions.

There had been little happiness to be found clinging to the edge of the Sea in Endóre. Eärwen had been a child when they left it behind, but she had not been so young that she had forgotten the perils of life in that land. She’d not grown so complacent here that she’d forgotten those perils. But she did wonder about it sometimes. She wondered what would happen if they had been allowed to stay there, once the Ainur had finished rooting out Melkor and his servants and all of the poor creatures he had twisted to his cause. Eärwen wondered if they would have been able to build lives for themselves on those distant shores. Those lives would necessarily have been diminished for the absence of their friends here in the Blessed Realm, but surely they could have been good lives, nonetheless.

And sometimes she wondered about the Lindai they had left behind on those distant shores. There was her uncle Elmo and his followers, there was Círdan, and there was Elwë, wherever he had gone, if he yet lived. Might they have built lives and communities in Endóre that, even if they were somewhat lesser than Alqualondë, were still lives that would have been worth living, communities that it would have been pleasant to live in?

But it was useless to speculate, when the only way Eärwen would see any of them again would be if they were slain in Endóre, and then released from the Doomsman’s halls. For the most part, Eärwen tried not to think about things she could never have.

For the most part.)

Blustery always was the wind this close to the Sea. The Sea did not sleep, and it stirred up the air above it always into a torrent, even when that torrent was a far cry from that which would have struck fear into the hearts of the Lindai. The Sea did not sleep, and it sent wind up the shore to the city to remind the Ellalië of this. Sand and grit battered at their faces and stuck in their eyes and mouths as Eärwen went to the little gate—just a simple latch, but high up enough off of the ground that a child younger than about thirty would have been unlikely to reach it—and opened it to let Anairë through. As Anairë passed her, her hair was whipping back and forth, the loose-fitting, lightweight clothes of the Lindai—she _had_ packed those clothes after all, and wore them now without comment or difficulty—fluttered like the wings of an agitated bird, and she made hacking, gagging noises as the sand kept insistently flying into her mouth.

Eärwen, under other circumstances, might have marked with some level of embarrassment this as a sign of how far gone she was. She’d come to terms with it a while back, though, and what would have been embarrassing to her long ago, if only because of what it revealed of her own self, she could only now regard with bemused fondness. Perhaps it was the rarity of it.

No, it was the rarity of it. Eärwen never saw Anairë in such a light in Tirion. In Tirion, Anairë’s hair was never as disheveled as the high winds of the seaside had rendered them now. In Tirion, Anairë never wore the simple, lightweight garments of the Lindai. In Tirion, Eärwen never saw or heard Anairë grimacing and hacking as she spat sand that had flown into her mouth out of her mouth. Even she was not so far gone as to think this especially attractive. But there was an intimacy to it, to being quite possibly the only person who had ever seen Anairë like this in all of Anairë’s adulthood. There was an intimacy to it, and there was an appeal in that that drew Eärwen further and further in, drew a smile from her lips that she could not help but know to be sappy, sentimental, downright _mawkish_.

She didn’t shy away from it, though. Eärwen tried not to shy away from things that originated from within. Enough of that, and she wouldn’t know herself, anymore.

At some point, her staring must have turned into something keen enough to be felt, for in between her spitting, Anairë turned to her, frowning slightly. “What is it?”

Eärwen shook her head, still smiling the smile she couldn’t help but crack before. “Nothing, Anairë. Let’s go on down. There will be some others there—“

“I imagine there are always some others there.”

“—but at this time, their number is usually relatively few.”

Anairë glanced back towards the gold-gilded rooftops, something almost like longing flitting over her face for a moment, before it was pushed aside. “It must be very soon after the Second Mingling in Tirion,” she murmured. “Very few will be awake in the city. I… did not think that Alqualondë kept to the same schedule, though.”

“More or less. There is some more variation, though, since our sky stays largely the same at all times.”

And Anairë was looking at that sky as they made their descent through the narrow, gritty path through the dunes. Somewhere to the south, someone had gathered clams and was cooking them over a fire; the aroma wafted to Eärwen’s nose, as enticing to her as the light gilding the rooftops had been to Eärwen. And under normal circumstances, she thought she would have wandered over and claimed a clam for herself, but that would just have to wait for another day. For now, there was Anairë, and the Sea, and the stars.

Once they were on reasonably level ground, where the sand turned to something finer and gentler than the rough, coarse foundation of the dunes, they paused to take off their shoes. The tide had begun to recede a little over an hour ago, and Eärwen sighed happily as her toes sank into cool, wet sand, little bubbles popping up around her feet.

Anairë, on the other hand, was staring at her shoes in something close to consternation. “Just… just leave them here?”

“We left them be on the beach the last time we were here, and no one took them then.”

She sighed, nodding as if convincing herself of the same. “As you say.”

And the last time they had been here, they had waded out together into the water, to a sandbar that Eärwen had guessed Anairë would need some time to rest on after forcing legs unused to such strenuous exercise to force their way through water that had strong opinions about being forced through. But this was a different part of the beach. There were no sandbars here, at least none large enough for two adults to sit on. Instead, Anairë sat down on the sand, in between the huddled beachgoers off to their right and south, carefully keeping her distance from the pack of three—no, four; one of them just popped out from behind a tower—children making a sandcastle.

For a moment, Eärwen considered asking Anairë if she wanted to help those children find intact seashells for their castle. But Anairë wasn’t looking at the castle. She was staring up at the stars, knees pulled up to her chest, head settled firmly on her knees. Eärwen would be surprised if she could even hear them laughing.

But then, Eärwen _had_ thought that this would be one of the big draws to getting Anairë to come back here. And… and she was pleased that the stars had not lost their luster in Anairë’s eyes.

_How could the stars lose their luster in the eyes of any of the Ellalië?_

Still, the point stood.

“I don’t know how I could have mistaken the lamps for the stars,” Anairë almost whispered, as Eärwen sat down beside her.

Anairë stared up at the stars with a fervor bordering on reverence, as if drinking in the sight of Varda Elentári’s creations was something she ought not do, but had decided that blasphemy by turning unworthy eyes on something inviolate was better than never looking upon them at all. She stared up at those stars as if they would be plucked out of the sky the moment she turned her back, leaving nothing but inky void. Eärwen did not know that sort of fervor. She never had. The Sea had been her constant companion, but never an object of worship. Looking at Anairë now, she felt as if she had been left outside of something. But there was still a smile curving over Anairë’s lips, if a small, hesitant smile, and perhaps that sterile reverence could fade, if greater familiarity was hers.

“The stars are smaller, of course; even from far away, the light thrown off by those lamps of yours had a wider radius. And the stars are so much more distant that they cannot give off much light of their own.”

All of a sudden, Eärwen felt… transported. She could not have helped it, could not have stopped it. Truth be told, there was little in her that _wished_ to stop it. There had been much danger in Endóre, and there was much danger, if danger of a different kind, in dwelling too long on her memories of the place. But this… There were stars on both sides of the Sea. Wherever you looked, if you could get high up enough that the light of the Trees was no longer a hindrance, there were stars. Thinking about the stars did not have to involve thinking about Endóre. And even when she thought of the stars as they had shone over the shores of Endóre, there was less danger to it. The stars had less attached to them, less baggage clinging to their heels.

Suddenly transported, Eärwen half-whispered, “You have never seen them as they were when they were younger. You have never seen them as they are in a land where they have nothing to compete with.”

Anairë shrugged, looking suddenly wistful. “And I never will, unless the Valar lift their prohibitions and allow us to make that journey there to visit the kin we left behind.” She picked at the hem of her long shirt. “And unless they have cleared out the last of the perilous creatures that harried my ancestors there, I do not think I would care to go there.”

No, Eärwen could not ask anyone to make the journey _back_ into Endóre, when there was still so much peril there, when the Maiar who had followed Melkor into rebellion remained, for the most part, at large. She wasn’t even certain that _she_ would have liked to make the journey back into Endóre without such assurances from the Valar—Eärwen longed for the faces of her kin, and sometimes chafed at the idea that the Ellalië might be barred from the lands where they had awakened, but she was also well-enamored of life and of staying alive, and would rather not take risks that she _knew_ were likely lead to a violent death, eventually.

Still, there were those moments when she wished to see those distant shores once more. There were more moments when she wished to see the stars as they had shone when they shone down on Endóre. And now, there were moments also when she wished that Anairë could be there with her too, on those distant shores, looking up at stars that seemed to shine so much brighter down on gloomy lands, even though when you looked up at them, they seemed no brighter than the same stars shining down over this Blessed Realm.

“A pity, then.” Eärwen offered Anairë a smile, one which she hoped that Anairë would accept, no matter how it might be shaped. “These same stars shone brightly down upon us when we waited for news from Ulmo and his Maiar, on whether we would be permitted to follow the Ñoldor and the Vaniai to these lands. When they were all the light we had known, we marked them all the more beautiful for it. We still mark them more beautiful and more beloved than the light of those trees growing upon Corollairë—however blasphemous you might think that,” she said quickly with a laugh, a bright and genuine laugh even if it was a quick one, the better to preempt any shock or dismay of Anairë’s.

No shock, no dismay. By now, Anairë knew her well enough that she seemed to be beyond both. Anairë chose to roll her eyes instead, digging her left hand into the sand. “’Blasphemous’ might be too strong of a word. The stars _were_ put into the sky by Elentári, after all, and to look upon them with no love would likely be a greater blasphemy than to hold them in higher esteem than the light of the twin Trees.”

“So you only think it a _lesser_ blasphemy?” Eärwen asked teasingly. “And not something completely free of blasphemy at all?”

Anairë fixed her in a long, ostensibly unamused stare. There was a faint, grudging twitch at the corner of her mouth that perhaps gave the lie to that. “Will you always be so eager to put words that have never been in my mouth, _in_ my mouth?”

“Only if you make it easy for me, Anairë.”

“Ah, we must come to a different topic, or at least _I_ must. _You_ , I suspect, could put the topic aside any time it pleases you to do so, but as for me, if we get started on this, I may never stop.”

“Oh, I know,” Eärwen told her brightly, trying to push the teasing quality out of her smile.

And likely not succeeding at that, given that Anairë merely rolled her eyes once more. “We were speaking of the stars, Princess Gadfly.” She lifted a hand to encompass, as much as a small, slender hand like hers could encompass something so incomprehensibly vast, the tapestry of the stars. “I…” A smile crept over her mouth, the sort of creeping smile that could only move in such a fashion when it was composed of wistfulness, when it was composed of something almost like regret, almost like longing. “Do you know, there are times when I envy you?”

Eärwen blinked, said nothing.

“I will take your silence to signify that you did not. But I do, Eärwen, I do. When the storms come, your stars must be totally obscured by them, so judging by the strength of this starlight, I doubt it to be strong enough to pierce such a resistant veil. But from Alqualondë, the light of Telperion and Laurelin is yet visible, even if it is faint, even if you must be standing in full view of the Calacirya to properly drink in its radiance. Meanwhile, from Tirion, even though I can see the glimmers of darkness at the edge of the eastern horizon, I can never see the stars. I must choose between the light of works of Kementári, or the light of the myriad works of Elentári. So I do envy you that, Eärwen—not having to choose, and not having to worry over how your choice will be interpreted. I…” Anairë averted her gaze from those stars for just a moment, staring down instead at where her bare feet had begun to sink into wet and yielding sand. “…I am yet unfond of this darkness. I should not be, for if the sky was lighter, I have no doubt that the light in the sky would snuff out the starlight in an instant. Starlight was made to be beautiful, not overpowering. And for that, I envy you. For there are moments when even I—yes, Princess Gadfly, even _I_ —must find a shadowed place in my home, away from endless light.”

Trying at lightness, Anairë remarked in continuation, though that lightness seemed just a little forced, “Laurelin’s light has never done anything for any of my headaches, at least. A dark room light only by a candle has been my greater friend in such extremities.”

But Eärwen _could_ hear that that lightness was forced. She knew Anairë. She knew when and where to mark out such things in her voice, violence done on her own emotions. And even if Eärwen had not recognized it from Anairë specially, she would still have known it. She saw in that forced brightness, in that unease clinging to its underside, an echo of something she had seen in the faces and heard in the voices of certain Ñoldor, somewhat less Vaniai, and even her own people, though very few of these. Never to be expressed in Tirion or _especially_ Valmar, but sometimes, when you got them out here, where the light was dimmer and the authority of the Valar seemed lesser as well, such admissions might be made. Anairë’s was by far the most-plainly worded, but you still heard people murmur to themselves of how the starlight was more beautiful than they had imagined, and the darkness less onerous than they feared.

They always seemed so guilty to be overheard admitting such. Sometimes, even when they did not realize that they had been overheard, that guilt still burrowed into their skin, half-alive and entirely burning.

Eärwen did not remember any of the Ellalië ever feeling guilty at the thought of what the Valar might think of them, back in the lands they had left behind.

_Not every change we made was a change for the better._

“We all need a change of scenery from time to time.” Eärwen rested her hand on Anairë’s slender arm. She did not engage with the guilt she had perceived. She was not sure how, and was certain that she knew no words that could have vanquished that guilt—Eärwen was not even certain she knew of anything she could say which would not have fed that guilt instead, until it was strong enough to devour Anairë, rather than gnaw dully at her heartstrings. “We cannot look upon the same landscape forever without wishing for a change.”

Anairë did not smile, but she nodded slightly, her chin bumping against her knees. “Perhaps,” she murmured. “And your stars are exceedingly lovely.”

“They are not just _my_ stars!” Eärwen retorted, suddenly jittery, face suddenly hot.

“But when I think of them,” Anairë told her, in a voice that ebbed and flowed in time with the expanse of dark water that stretched out before them, “I think of you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Calacirya** —“Cleft of Light” (Quenya); a mountain pass in the Pelóri, in which was located the hill of Túna and the city of Tirion. It is mentioned that the Calacirya was “made” in the same year that the Vanyar and Ñoldor first reached Aman, suggesting that it was created by one or several of the Valar in order to allow the Elves into Aman without having to cross the Pelóri. After the hiding of Valinor when the Pelóri Mountains were raised higher, the Calacirya was the only gap left in the mountains, left there because the Elves still needed to breathe the air brought by the wind over the sea from Middle-Earth where they were born, and because this would have left the Falmari completely isolated from the Vanyar and the Ñoldor (No mention is made of what would have become of the remaining Ñoldor, considering that their city was located within the Calacirya).  
>  **Corollairë** —possibly a compressed version of ‘Coron Oiolairë’, meaning “Mound of Ever-Summer” (Quenya). One of the names for the mound on which the Two Trees of Valinor grew.  
>  **Ellalië** —the Telerin form of 'Eldalië'; 'the Elven-Folk', usually a term used to refer to all of the Elves, though generally someone speaking of the Eldalië is not referring to the Avari.  
>  **Endóre** —Middle-Earth (Quenya)  
>  **Falmari** —those among the Teleri who completed the journey to Aman; the name is derived from the Quenya falma, '[crested] wave.'  
>  **Lindai** —an old clan-name for the Lindar, the name the Nelyar used to refer to themselves, which means ‘Singers’ (Telerin)  
>  **Vaniai** —the Telerin Quenya equivalent of 'Vanyar'


	4. Chapter Four

_‘But when I think of them, I think of you.’_

Eärwen had never been one to let another’s words haunt her. She had always thought that to be on account of some truth regarding her own self. She was not the soul of dry, inflexible practicality, but she knew herself not to be someone given over to wild fits of emotions, either. She had been a girl in Endóre, wary of every shadow, and then she had been a princess, helping in whatever way she could to build a city where her people would be happy, where she would never have to call another place home, for this place, _this_ place would be enough. She did not let her imagination shrivel and die in the recesses of her mind, but she hadn’t let it rule her, either. She had never wished for it to.

Now, however, now, Eärwen had been forced to reevaluate her own perceptions of herself. Never before had another’s words haunted her, and she had thought that was because she did not allow them to, because there was something in the fibers of her own self that kept them from haunting her, that kept her mind clear enough that the words of another never repeated themselves over and over again in her mind. Now, _now_ , Eärwen knew different. The new reality had come to her, and imposed itself so neatly and so thoroughly over the old one that without the power of her memory, Eärwen could scarcely have told that there used to be something different at all.

It was very simple: Eärwen had never before been haunted by another’s words, because she had never been told anything haunting.

Yes, that was very simple. And now she had been told something that completely tore down the walls that had previously insulated Eärwen’s mind from anything that could cling to it like a ghost, like a houseless spirit trying to burrow into her body and oust her own spirit from the flesh, so that it could have a home once more.

_‘But when I think of them, I think of you.’_

Eärwen was to understand that Finwë and Indis took their supper at the head of the great table in their palace nearly every day. Thankfully, the Lindai didn’t hold with such, or at least Eärwen’s family didn’t hold with such, and with her father breaking bread with the mariners in the harbors and her mother holding a lecture for the benefit of a gaggle of young medical students, that had left Eärwen, her younger brothers, and Anairë at the table reserved for the royal family and their guests.

Eärwen’s brothers weren’t terribly interested in Anairë and would rather talk amongst themselves or skive off from their place at the table to go chat with the children of the kitchen servants eating at one of the lower tables. Anairë had eaten in silence, giving away none of her feelings towards the pie filled with shellfish that could not have been much more familiar to her now than it had been the first time she had visited Alqualondë. Whether Anairë liked the shellfish—a mix of crab, scallops, and shrimp tonight—and thought it would be rude to be overly exuberant in her praises, or she did not care for it and thought that it would have been rude to say so, even in an undertone that would have reached Eärwen’s ears alone, her expression was entirely too opaque to give anything away. The amount of pie she ate gave nothing away either—she had eaten what was put on her plate at the start, and then gone for nothing more, just the same as always.

Herself, Eärwen was left to stare, and though she was not too worried about Anairë herself noticing, she did wonder if she was going to have to spend a few day after all of this was done fending off her brothers’ impertinent questions and even more impertinent teasing regarding the Ñoldorin lady she had brought back with her to Alqualondë a second time.

(She did hope the boys would not corner Anairë herself. She doubted that they would pester Anairë too sorely, especially considering that Anairë would weigh ‘princes of the Falmari’ against ‘obnoxious little boys’ and come down firmly on the side of treating them the way she would have treated any obnoxious little boys asking her cheeky questions.)

Eärwen was left to stare, and far from being worried that Anairë would catch her staring at her over their supper, the larger part of herself wished that Anairë _would_ look up from her meal, and catch Eärwen’s eye.

That was not to be, however, and Eärwen was left admiring the delicate profile of Anairë’s thin, pointed face, all through supper, and wishing that she could hear Anairë’s voice again, to complement those delicate features.

But Alqualondë operated on the same sort of time as Tirion, and just a couple of hours after what admittedly was a rather late supper, they were all heading towards their beds. (With the exception of those who scorned the hours abided to by those who lived within the shelter of the Pelóri, and cheerfully kept their own hours. It did mean that when Eärwen found herself restless during the hours when she should be sleeping, there was somewhere in the city to go to to find something to eat that wouldn’t have involved waking some unfortunate kitchen servant, to find something to drink that wouldn’t have involved rooting around in a dark cellar on her own. Eärwen did not worry about wandering the city alone during these times. Neither did her parents worry. This was not Endóre, and they did not worry about wandering out alone by themselves.) Eärwen took to her bed, knowing that neither of her parents had yet returned and not worrying about it at all; her father in particular might not return until the light shining faintly from the Calacirya was turning from mingled gold and silver to pure gold. They did not worry when other members of the family were not in when it was time to take to bed and search out sleep, though the boys were expected to be home by a certain time. They had never needed to worry about such things here.

Eärwen took to her bed, and sought out sleep in vain. Those words strung themselves out for her hearing, echoing in her ears as clearly as if Anairë was lying in bed next to her, whispering, lips brushing against Eärwen’s skin, and that was a visual that was not helping Eärwen at _all_. (Not least because she could not imagine Anairë comfortable with anything so sensual—not at the start, certainly.)

She would dearly like to know what Anairë meant by it, if she had meant anything at all. She couldn’t believe that Anairë hadn’t meant _anything_ by it at all; Anairë was so careful in her words, most of the time, that the idea of Anairë having just blurted that out with no meaning behind it at all seemed to pass beyond the realm of unlikelihood into the realm of near-impossibility. There was something to it, and Eärwen would have dearly liked to know what it was.

It was probably too late to ask. If Eärwen asked when they got up from bed to spend their last day in Alqualondë before the festival began, Anairë could easily claim—no doubt with plausibility as her cloak—that she did not remember saying anything like that to Eärwen. They had said so much to each other on the way back to the palace from the beaches that Anairë could just as easily claim that perhaps she had said that, but that it had gotten swallowed up in the tumult of everything else that had been said. That was not the strategy Eärwen would have used, personally, but she liked to think she knew Anairë well enough by now to guess how Anairë would dodge a conversation that would be personally awkward to her to have.

_‘But when I think of them, I think of you.’_

Not rejection that she feared, not exactly. Eärwen liked to think that she was old enough and mature enough that she could handle rejection with good grace. Not everything in this life could be hers, not even in the Blessed Realm. It was best to come to terms with that as soon as was possible, lest reaching for things quite genuinely out of reach would engender a resentment that could not be quelled by praying to the right Vala. Eärwen tried not to be possessive of anyone, let alone people. She had watched enough of the Ñoldor succumb to that, and how unhappy it made them, to balk at the idea of consciously following their example.

Fear did exist, however, clinging to the last trailing syllables of those words. Fear murmured to her in a small voice, but nonetheless not a voice that Eärwen could entirely ignore.

Rejection was easy. Rejection was something that could be seen, and measured, and respected. The ambiguity of seeming indifference, of everything petering off without an ending, that was harder. Out of that came the questioning of self and of the world, of wondering if memory told you the true story of what had happened, if you remembered properly the frown, the gleam in the eye, the shutting off of the face that had caused you to withdraw your suit and return to treating that person solely as a friend.

Anairë, if pressed directly, might think it too discourteous to reject directly. Eärwen could see that in her, could see the war between what was more or less decorous leading her down a path that promised ambiguity, that promised an avoidance of having to name directly what it was that lived in her own heart. Anairë might prevaricate, might hem and haw, and then…

And then, stop writing letters to Eärwen in Alqualondë. Might take longer to reply to Eärwen’s letters, might write more perfunctory replies, replies that had nothing in them that could give offense, nothing that Eärwen could latch onto as a cause for concern, but that would have said much while telling absolutely nothing all the same. Might find pretexts to reject any future offers of trips to Alqualondë. Might find pretexts to be visiting relatives in Valmar when Eärwen was visiting Tirion, might find pretexts to return to Tirion if Eärwen then found her business taking her further west to Valmar itself.

It wouldn’t be an ending, not really. It would be more that the threads of the story frayed and frayed and frayed, until they did not snap, for there was not enough tension for them to snap, but simply disintegrated, and came to an end without really telling an ending.

Eärwen did fear that.

These cheery thoughts carried Eärwen through the time she would normally have spent sleeping, and she supposed that some actual sleep must have entered into the equation at some point, she opened eyes that she would have sworn had fallen shut for only a moment, only to find her candle burned down considerably further than it had been when her eyes had last been open. Burned down far enough, in fact, that it was almost time to get up.

Almost? Eärwen sighed as she sat up in bed, rolling stiff shoulders and taking only small satisfaction in the way they popped. She could forget ‘almost’: it was close enough to when she would need to be awake and up and about that even if she fell asleep once more the moment her head hit the pillow, it would not be enough to truly qualify as _rest_. She might as well get up now.

 _I wonder how Anairë would respond if I was to tell her that thoughts of her robbed me of several hours’ worth of sleep_.

For a few moments that Eärwen spent pondering her hair in her vanity mirror, wondering if she was imagining a tangle or if she had missed yet another snag with her comb, the thought had an appeal to it that was difficult to deny. But soon thereafter she noticed that it had gone traipsing over the border from teasing into humiliation, showed no interest in going traipsing back, and in reeling her desires back over that border, she must kill the thought. Better to let it die, than to let friendship die in its place.

Eärwen would see Anairë soon enough. Even with the aid of candles, without the constant light of Ninquelótë and Culúrien, Anairë’s sleep patterns were disrupted, here. She could not find sleep, or else she could find it, but it was constantly interrupted by bouts of unpleasant wakefulness, or else she slept longer than she meant to, or else she woke and was gripped at first with panic, for sleep had robbed her of knowledge of her own surroundings and she thought herself back in Tirion and thought that something was wrong, _terribly_ wrong with the Trees—

Anairë did not sleep well in Alqualondë, was what Eärwen had noticed, and she thought she had better go wake her, lest she miss breakfast. They could always beg a less elaborate meal from the cooks, but Anairë would likely have balked at the thought of troubling the cooks. Taking her out to one of the eateries around the city would have involved going close enough nearby to see the displays that were likely nearing completion even now. Breakfast in the place it would be. Now, to make certain Anairë was awake in time for it.

Eärwen never got as far as Anairë’s guest quarters. The wing of the palace that held residential apartments had windows facing east, both in the chambers and out in the hallways. Eärwen had always been fond of those windows. They held a genuinely charming view of the Sea, though of course, that view could only improve from being close enough to feel the sea-wind on her face and the sea-spray on her face and the scent of saltwater rising in her nose; Eärwen had been fond of sitting in the windowsills when it was winter and the wind down on the beaches had turned too bitter to be braved for more than a few minutes at a time, though a scarf over the more tender parts of her face could serve the purpose of a shield just as well as panes of glass.

There were others who enjoyed those windowsills for the same purpose. She had found guests in the palace sitting in one of the deep alcoves more than once, looking out upon the waters or the stars. When she spotted a shadow denser than the shadows around it in the corner of one of the alcoves in the hallway spreading out before her, she did not need to guess who it was.

“Anairë?” It was good practice to announce herself, though, so as not to startle anyone, and so, Eärwen called out, in a relatively quiet voice, “Anairë, is that you?”

The shadow quivered slightly, in such a way roughly analogous to a person nodding. “Yes, it’s me.” Anairë spoke equally softly, and Eärwen wondered if Anairë realized the exact hour. “Have I woken you?”

Eärwen shook her head, trusting that the torches burning in the better-lit parts of the hallway would render the gesture into something more solid than the faint quiver of darkness the shadows had made of Anairë’s nod. “Breakfast will be served within the hour. I was actually making sure _you_ were awake.”

There came a quivering of the shadows that yielded up enough pale flesh to signal to Eärwen that Anairë was spreading out her hands, a gesture that wasn’t quite a shrug—too grand and theatrical for such a casual thing—but certainly wasn’t an invitation for an embrace, either, though Eärwen had known some who interpreted it that way. “And now your quest has ended.”

Eärwen smiled, and hoped that the torchlight would put that smile into sharp relief, hoped it would make it into something as grand, though not quite as theatrical, as the gesture Anairë had just made with her hands. “And now my quest has ended.” Moving too quickly to listen to her own whispering mind regarding any possible need to give Anairë just a little more space, considering just how she had spent the last several hours, Eärwen slipped out of the embrace of torchlight and into the closer, less discriminating (for there were many things that merry light had never touched, but darkness had kissed the skin of all that lived, for were there not shadows? Were there not clouds that came down so low in the sky as to obscure the light of twin Trees? Were there not rooms without windows? Were there not caves that reached down so far that no light from outside could lay hands on their depths?) embrace of the shadows gathering around the alcove and the glass. “I would have thought you would have brought a candle with you, if you were going to sit here,” she tossed off, in deference to Anairë’s preference for light.

This time, she was close enough to make out what was certainly a shrug. “I did not realize the hour; I thought that everyone would still be in bed, and did not wish to disturb them.” She inclined her gaze towards the glass, an expression that was halfway between a smile and a grimace twisting on her lips. “There was another reason.”

Really, further questioning was unnecessary. Eärwen knew what drew guests to the windows; she knew well enough what drew _her_ to the window, when it was more practical to stand at the window than it was to go down to the shore itself. But the Ellalië did not just go delving casually into each other’s minds, especially not now that spoken language was so widespread among those who were capable of it as to be positively ubiquitous. (There had been a small band of Ellalië who had broken off from Olwë’s group in Endóre. No, this was not the host led by Elmo, those who went back into the east to search for Elwë. Neither had it been Nówë’s people. There had been another group, those who were called by outsiders ‘Lindi,’ since they would give no name to themselves, would not speak of themselves at all, or anything else. They had still relied exclusively on ósanwë, clinging stubbornly to it out of a distrust for spoken speech, and sometimes, Eärwen wondered if they clung to ósanwë still as their sole means of communication, or if they had finally adopted spoken language in the face of how much more practical it was to have both tools at their disposal.) So Eärwen inclined her head slightly towards the window, her mouth quirking ever so slightly, and asked her, “And what was that reason?”

Anairë shook her head. She might have rolled her eyes. Then, suddenly, she leaned forward, picking at the hem of Eärwen’s sleeve, pulling at a loose thread. “You know very well what it is, Eärwen, and I would not believe any attempt to pretend otherwise. But if you wish to be like that,” she said almost primly, though she would not meet Eärwen’s gaze, “I will tell you, nonetheless.

“The wind bothered me, when we were down by the seashore. I had wished to look upon the stars, and I had plenty of opportunity, but the wind had plenty of opportunity to assail me there as well, and I needed to seek shelter inside more quickly than I would have liked.”

“You may grow accustomed to the wind, in time.”

Anairë shook her head once more. “Not quickly enough, I fear. But these windows are very clean and clear. Do you know, I would have expected to see more colored glass here? Your people are very concerned with color and with making their surroundings as colorful as possible, I’ve noticed, and I would have thought that colored glass would be quite popular here.” Before Eärwen could explain it to her, Anairë paused and frowned, and effectively explained it to herself. “But I suppose that without the light of the Trees shining brightly here, colored glass cannot be shown off to its best advantage. Yes, that must be it.

“Anyways, there was a point in here, somewhere: let me come to it. I wished to look upon the stars here. That was not my sole reason for coming—this festival of yours yet intrigues me, and not least because you yet _refuse_ to tell me anything about it—“

“You’ll find out on your own, in the proper time,” Eärwen told her brightly.

Anairë’s expression momentarily turned sour, before clearing. “You would say that, O Princess of Secrets.”

“I think I preferred Princess Gadfly.”

“And _I_ prefer getting back to my point. I wished to come to Alqualondë to see the stars. Not _solely_ to see the stars, but that was a large part of what compelled me to accept the invitation you proffered.” Her gaze grew slightly hazy as she stared out of the window at the glittering, tangled net of stars that ever sparkled in the sky above Alqualondë, her mouth slack with something that was not strong enough for reverence but was entirely too strong for mere fondness. “The works of Elentári are…” She hummed in the back of her throat, resting her forehead against the thick glass separating her from the wind she had apparently found so troublesome, even if she’d given no sign of it when they were actually there. “I do wish there was a way to see them through the light put off by the works of Kementári within Eldamar. Each by themselves are exceedingly lovely. Together, and the beauty of Aman would be complete.”

Personally, Eärwen thought that the light of the Trees would give starlight a gaudy cast; Treelight was not something that bore a complement gracefully. But they would never know for true if she was correct, and she supposed she could keep her peace without too much trouble. If starlight was made gaudy by the addition of Treelight, that was a thought that Eärwen suspected would be following her into dreams quite unhappily, but it was not something she would ever have to contend with in the waking world.

And if she interrupted Anairë again, they might find themselves meandering down a digression that would see them _both_ missing breakfast. Considering that breakfast today was supposed to her favorite variety of noodles and sausage, Eärwen would like to avoid that, if at all possible.

“But here, against this dark sky, the stars have no rivals for the eyes of the Eldar. Set against this dark sky, all eyes must be drawn to the stars, to the gentle light that Elentári bestowed upon us to gladden our hearts and strengthen our spirits.” Anairë shifted her body where she was sitting in the alcove, so that she could more comfortably press the side of her face against the cool glass, rather than just her forehead. Now, she was smiling, even though that smile was wholly wistful, crumpling at the edges of her mouth. “There are times when I wish I could have experienced them as they were when she first hung them in the sky, you know. I’ve thought of what you said earlier, of how the stars shone brighter over Endóre than they do here, shining over the lands of Aman. I wonder if they were brighter in general in those days, and that now that the great part of the Quendi have come from Endóre to Aman, where we have plenty of light and less need for the heartening effects of the stars, Elentári has allowed their light to dim, and we will never again see them as they once were.”

Eärwen reached forward and took the hand that had at some point withdrawn from her sleeve. “I wouldn’t worry too much about that. I can’t believe that Varda would just allow the stars to dim out of our sight completely; imagine how much time she must have spent just putting them together, let alone pinning each of them to the sky. And as for _you_ —“ her mouth was putting out a smile that Eärwen was not entirely certain was convincing, but she spun it for Anairë’s benefit nonetheless “—even if the starlight is stronger in Endóre, I do not think you would care to see it for yourself, if it meant having to go there.”

Even remembering the peril and the fear, there were moments when Eärwen wished to return to Endóre. If only to visit, if only to lay eyes on the kin she had left behind, there were times when she wished to journey again across the Sea and set foot on lands that had never known any light but fire and starlight. There were also those times when, if the Valar had succeeded in clearing out all of the creatures that had haunted the dark in the sea of shadows outside the lights of their campfires, Eärwen thought that she would have liked to return for the sake of exploration. There had been a whole, wide world out there, after all, and she had seen so little of it that though Eärwen had been born in Endóre, she could scarcely claim to have known it at all.

All of that, and yet, Eärwen could not imagine Anairë ever setting foot on those shores. Anairë would no doubt have considered it sacrilegious to leave behind the land the Valar had bid them to come to, even for a short visit. And if the Valar had not taken care of all that had made the Ellalië’s lives in Endóre perilous, than she did not _want_ to imagine Anairë setting foot on the shores of Endóre. Anairë was not someone who had been made for danger, not someone who had been made for a life of skulking or hunting in the dark. There had been many in Endóre who had not been made for such lives, either, and had been forced to live them, anyways. There had been many who had not been made for danger, had been forced to live in danger, and had eventually succumbed to that danger. Eärwen did not like to imagine Anairë in such a position.

A spasm of something like laughter passed over Anairë’s face, though there was no sound of laughter to accompany it. “Most likely not. If the Valar deemed it a place where the Eldar should not live, I doubt I would enjoy it much at all, if there was any enjoyment to be had there at all.”

That, too, was more complicated than a simple ‘yes’ or ‘no’ could encompass, but it was not a conversation Eärwen felt like having right now, and the fact that she hadn’t eaten had relatively little to do with that. She kept her silence, and let Anairë go on.

“I was just thinking about the constellations, though.” And now, Anairë was running her fingers through her hair, drawing her head back from the glass, staring out upon the expanse of stars as if looking upon something that beckoned her to drown in, and drown happily. “When I came here for the first time, I knew very little about constellations. I have known stars as objects of unsurpassable beauty, but I have never had the occasion to use them as navigational tools. I cannot imagine being a mariner, and I cannot imagine using the stars and constellations to navigate by on the open Sea. It all seems so far away.”

Eärwen shrugged. “I still do not pay much mind to the constellations, and I am sorry if that disappoints you. There just hasn’t ever been a need.” She was a swimmer, not a sailor. She could build a ship with the best of them, could weave sails with the best of them, but though Eärwen had been a passenger on a voyage or two (or three, or four), she had never been in charge of those voyages. She had never taken charge of a ship, never held the compass, never made maps out of the stars. The stars simply were, and to make shapes out of them that weren’t born from the fancy of a moment and lost just as quickly felt oddly diminishing towards them. “We likely have books of the constellations here, though, if you would like to consult them today.”

Perhaps Eärwen would join her in the archives, if Anairë chose such. She could not spend the whole day down there, considering her own responsibilities, and she hoped, _hoped_ , that Anairë wouldn’t choose to spend her whole day ensconced with the books of Alqualondë, either, but there would be some time when they could be down in the archives together. Eärwen had never cared much about the constellations, and she _really_ did not want to expose herself to something that could have diminished the stars in her eyes, but it did occur to her that just because she had never been in command of a voyage before, did not mean that she never would be. Just because it had never come to pass while she was a passenger on a ship that everyone who had been in command had been incapacitated, and the sailors had never looked to their princess to step up in the captain’s place, did not mean that such an occasion would never come to pass.

The Blessed Realm was largely free of peril, but the Sea was the Sea, and did not abide by any rules of its own—even the Maiar could only impose their will upon it for so long before the spell woven by their will unraveled, and it was free to do as it would once more. There might come a time when Eärwen was stuck on a ship so far from the shore that she could make out no sign of it, and there were only the stars for her to navigate by, and no one else on board who could navigate by them. Perhaps it would be better to be prepared for such an eventuality. The Maiar could not be everywhere at once, after all, and perhaps Ulmo would be among the other Valar giving counsel at such a time, and unable to respond to the cries of distress given off by the Lindai trapped on the Sea, with no way back to shore.

(And perhaps Eärwen would be able to hold onto that train of thought the entire time she was down in the archives with Anairë, and perhaps she would be able to devote all of her attention to the books and the knowledge they contained. Eärwen had never been as avidly bookish as were certain others, but there was just enough of the spirit of the Ñoldor in her to make the prospect of new knowledge, if it was something that she did not think would harm her or harm others—when she thought about it logically, knowledge coming into her own mind regarding the stars was about as likely to have an objective effect on the stars themselves as Eärwen wishing that the light pouring in from the Calacirya would not touch Alqualondë was likely to have an effect on the Trees: that is to say, none whatsoever—something that did indeed appeal to her.

Perhaps Eärwen would hold to that purpose the whole time she was there. But she suspected that sooner or later, she would begin to derive greater pleasure from watching Anairë pore over a book in the sort of intense fascination she could never conjure for herself.)

Anairë waved a hand, lazy motion of flesh and bone through still air. “Later, perhaps. It is several days before I am supposed to return to Tirion, is it not? I just…” Her eyes raked over the stars. “Elentári arranged them in the sky in this manner for a purpose. The shapes that the stars form, the shapes that have revealed themselves to the astronomers who made the constellations known to the Eldar, those must have been laid down by Elentári as well.”

“I wonder if Varda was really thinking about it so hard,” Eärwen offered, working hard to keep her voice even, working to keep the suggestion out of her tone.

Anairë wrinkled her nose, eyes narrowing as if trying to scour Eärwen’s bland face for something with more flavor—ah, so it had worked. “I wonder at your having never been struck down for such casual blasphemy as what passes your lips on a near-daily basis.”

Eärwen laughed. “My casual blasphemy shores up your own faith.”

“Perhaps,” Anairë allowed, a softening in her features that Eärwen would not have noticed in the shadows had the softening not reached her eyes as well. “And perhaps it shores up my courage, as well. I have asked questions I would never have dared ask before I met you, and have cringed less at the answering shock than I would have before I watched you weather them without flinching. But constellations, Eärwen. The _stars_ , the shapes they form. I hope one day to know them better.”

Another laugh, though this second laugh was a little more forced, a little less something that could have woken up every person sleeping in the vicinity, had she not been fortunate. “To know them best, you would have to stay here long enough to memorize how they have been mapped out. You would have to stay here long enough to work with them yourself.”

The image of Anairë on a ship, learning to walk in time with the pulse of the waves, getting over any sea-sickness or land-homesickness, Anairë learning the Sea the way the Lindai learned the Sea, was something close to erotic, and Eärwen was thankful that Anairë was neither so strong with ósanwë nor so rude as to pry that she could have sensed the thoughts burning beneath the surface of Eärwen’s skin.

“Perhaps.” Anairë turned her gaze back to the stars, staring up at them with a longing that Eärwen hoped one day would be fixed upon her own face, if it was not arrogant or ill-wishing to hope for such things. She mouthed a second ‘perhaps,’ but the ghost of the word never passed through her lips into the air.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Calacirya** —“Cleft of Light” (Quenya); a mountain pass in the Pelóri, in which was located the hill of Túna and the city of Tirion. It is mentioned that the Calacirya was “made” in the same year that the Vanyar and Ñoldor first reached Aman, suggesting that it was created by one or several of the Valar in order to allow the Elves into Aman without having to cross the Pelóri. After the hiding of Valinor when the Pelóri Mountains were raised higher, the Calacirya was the only gap left in the mountains, left there because the Elves still needed to breathe the air brought by the wind over the sea from Middle-Earth where they were born, and because this would have left the Falmari completely isolated from the Vanyar and the Ñoldor (No mention is made of what would have become of the remaining Ñoldor, considering that their city was located within the Calacirya).  
>  **Culúrien** —an alternate name for Laurelin, the younger of the Two Trees of Valinor.  
>  **Ellalië** —the Telerin form of 'Eldalië'; 'the Elven-Folk', usually a term used to refer to all of the Elves, though generally someone speaking of the Eldalië is not referring to the Avari.  
>  **Endóre** —Middle-Earth (Quenya)  
>  **Falmari** —those among the Teleri who completed the journey to Aman; the name is derived from the Quenya falma, '[crested] wave.'  
>  **Lindai** —an old clan-name for the Lindar, the name the Nelyar used to refer to themselves, which means ‘Singers’ (Telerin)  
>  **Lindi** —the name by which many of the Green-Elves referred to themselves, adapted from 'Lindai', a form of the term 'Lindar', which many of the Teleri used to refer to themselves during the Great March from Cuiviénen, and the name that the Falmari still use to refer to themselves (Nandorin)  
>  **Ninquelótë** —‘White Blossom’ (Quenya); one of the many names given to Telperion. It is likely that this name was widely used among the Teleri of Aman, considering that the Númenóreans received their white tree, Nimloth, from the Elves of Tol Eressëa, and Nimloth is the Sindarin equivalent of the Quenya ‘Ninquelótë.’  
>  **Ósanwë** —“interchange of thought” (Quenya); a form of telepathy shared among the Elves  
>  **Quendi** —literally ‘the Speakers’; Elves (singular: Quendë) (Quenya)


	5. Chapter Five

The day of the festival arrived alongside the first stirring of storm clouds to the far southern horizon. Eärwen was not overly worried regarding these, as the wind had not picked up in such a way as what she would regard as likely to be the herald of a storm. She had lived through enough storms, strong, weak, or something terrifyingly close to deadly, to know the signs of them when they came to her. They were not coming to her now. Those clouds did nothing but block out the stars that shone in the southern skies, and though Eärwen knew that even that would be enough to send some of the Lindai back into their homes (there were those who thought that cloudy skies were signs that the Valar did not favor the holding of the festival this year, and who would refuse to leave their homes the entire time that the festival was held anyways, out of a fear that they would be caught up in the inevitable punishment when that punishment came—and the fact that it never had was never enough to sway them, not even a little bit), she hoped that the hiding of the southern stars would not be enough to dampen Anairë’s spirits.

Anairë’s spirits were, Eärwen had learned early on, somewhat capricious in their manner. Certain things about her, absolutely no level of hardship was enough to dampen her spirits regarding them. When it came to a new treatise that she wanted to read, no matter how foul the weather was in Tirion on the day that treatise was first made available to the public, she would venture out into the streets to procure herself a copy of it. If she was determined to go to Corollairë to make prayers to Yavanna under the light of Yavanna’s most celebrated creations, nothing could dissuade her from it. If Anairë was determined to get out of having to mind one of her younger relatives, especially when she wasn’t originally supposed to be minding them, she would seize on literally any excuse that put itself in range of her hands.

But Eärwen had watched Anairë prepare to do something, prepare to do something she had been planning to do for weeks, if not months, and then, something would happen, something random, sometimes something completely minor, and that by itself would be enough to dissuade her. That would be enough to make her balk, turn away from the front door of her family’s home, and go back further in, having resolved to try at a different time, or not at all. She never would explain just what it was that was making her really balk under these circumstances. There were surface causes, apparent causes, things that Anairë _said_ were causes, but they had never quite rung true for Eärwen. Would it be such with the clouds, today? The clouds act as the cover, and Eärwen never quite discerns just what it was that was _really_ making Anairë balk?

She did not have long to dwell on these worries. As it turned out, she need not have worried about it at all.

Eärwen had told Anairë to wait for her by the dovecote. She had wanted their first meeting on this first day of the festival, wanted their departure from the palace into the city together, to go reasonably unremarked by those who lived in the palace with them. It had seemed like the best thing for it at the time, but as Eärwen tried to select what outfit, what jewelry, she thought would serve her best on this day of days, Eärwen began to wonder if Anairë might not make something out of it that she’d not meant it to.

As Eärwen held up earrings and bangles and bracelets and necklaces, rubbed her fingers uneasily over her favorite string of pearls, contemplating what might be most pleasing to her eyes and the eyes of others, what might match her silvery-green tunic and loose black trousers best, she wondered if Anairë might not have taken offense at that direction. Oh, but she was fretting and hemming and hawing more than she ever had before with anyone _else_ she had brought to Alqualondë as a guest (though in most of those cases, it was not someone she would have been likely ever to meet outside of the fraught domain of politics), but she could not help it, could not help it at all. Protocol was not so different between the Ñoldor and the Lindai as all that. This was not how a guest was typically treated, and Anairë would no doubt have _known_ that. Would she be offended at being treated the way a secret would have been treated, or the way a servant would have been treated? Would she read into it that which Eärwen did not wish to read into it, or almost worse yet, that which Eärwen _did_ wish her to read into it, just not quite yet?

She didn’t normally get like this.

She should not have gotten like this.

Eärwen made her way quickly to the dovecote. Though she wouldn’t be surprised to learn that some of the Lindai had indeed chosen to stay inside today in response to the clouds gathering far to the south, though she could not see the city proper past the walls of the palace, she could at least _hear_ the city. Though the festival did not come straight up to the gates of the palace itself—best to leave a path open for quick horses, in case of an emergency—it came close enough that Eärwen could hear the cheerful voices, some raised in speech, others in song, and yes, that did sound quite a bit as though most of the city had turned out for the celebrations. Good, good. That was one problem resolved.

The area around the dovecote was considerably better-lit than the hallway had been yesterday, when last Eärwen had come upon Anairë without Anairë first noticing her presence. Where before Eärwen had only had a patch of shadow somewhat denser than the shadows around it to mark out Anairë’s presence, now, Anairë was graced by the light of a host of candles held in lamps of blue and gold and silver glass. It was a light that could make anyone look like a child of the Ainur, like a Maia risen from the Sea to explore the city of the Lindai by the shoreline. Anairë…

A little better than that. Eärwen thought she could do a little better than that, though it might tax her mind to grope for the words.

Eärwen had not thought to teach Anairë the fishtail braid that was most popular among the Lindai, at least those who wore their hair long enough to be braided, in the first place. Perhaps later, if Anairë would allow her to touch her hair in such a fashion, she would do so, but for now, Anairë’s long brown hair was collected in the simple three-strand braid, simpler than what the noblewomen of Tirion typically preferred, that she had always worn when she was venturing into an area with high wind where she was unlikely to have access to a comb. She’d not threaded anything into those braids—the last time one of Anairë’s sisters had suggested hairpins or decorative combs or even just ribbons, Anairë had complained of a sensitive scalp, and that was the end of that—but she had taken the time to brush her hair to a soft, dark-copper shine before winding it into a braid, and that gleam would have only been tarnished by anything metallic, or even anything with the soft shine of a satin ribbon. It wasn’t Eärwen’s hair, and she ultimately had no say in what was done with it, but she could not help but be pleased by the state of affairs as it had turned out.

Blue were her clothes, which Eärwen could only have expected, especially considering that she had picked out the bolts of cloth for the clothes made for Anairë in the Lindai style herself. A long, simple dress, a pale blue silk verging on cerulean, something Eärwen had picked to match with Anairë’s eyes. The collar and skirt hem of the dress were both embroidered with white lilies, the thread glistening even at this distance, and the dress was girdled with a sash of darker blue silk, crusted with tiny seed pearls. Bound to her sash was a small purse, and at that, Eärwen had to shake her head and smile a little; even after _assuring_ her that she wouldn’t need that, even after assuring her that Eärwen would bring money of her own, she had still felt the need. The dress left Anairë’s arms mostly bare. Eärwen had never actually seen Anairë’s arms bare, before; she had always favored the long sleeves the Ñoldor wore. In the candlelight, Anairë’s arms almost gleamed, light catching on pale flesh lightly dotted with moles. At her left wrist was a broad silver bracelet Eärwen thought to be Vaniai make. Though the Lindai liked silver as much as anyone living in the Blessed Realm, it was certainly not anything Anairë had picked up in Alqualondë, and Eärwen did not think she had ever seen opals used in Ñoldorin jewelry; every Ñoldo even slightly concerned with jewels that Eärwen had spoken to complained endlessly of the fickleness of opals when they tried to use them in jewelry. The opals were…

Eärwen wondered why opals weren’t used more in _Lindai_ jewelry. Perhaps their jewel-smiths, few as they were, had taken too much advice from their Ñoldorin counterparts. That was all that Eärwen could figure, for the way the opals in Anairë’s bracelet caught the light reminded her of nothing quite so much as colored lamps lighting up the surface of the waters of their beloved Sea, especially in the winter, when the foam bristled with iridescent shards of ice. It paired exceptionally well with the blue of Anairë’s dress and sash. It paired well with her eyes. It all looked…

Lovely felt inadequate. Lovely was what was coming to Eärwen’s mind. Lovely was all that would scratch at the surface of her tongue.

Lovely, and likely to grow impatient if Eärwen did not approach her soon. Eärwen cleared her throat, feeling self-conscious once again about her clothing and jewelry, trying to push it down before it became too nakedly clear on her face. “Are you ready to go?”

Anairë started at Eärwen’s voice sounding in the quiet courtyard—well, quiet aside from the distant murmuring of voices out in the city, and the slightly more distant roll and rumble of the Sea crashing against the sand—her eyes fixing suddenly on Eärwen’s face. She didn’t answer Eärwen immediately, instead looking her up and down as if evaluating her, eyes lingering on the pearls strung at Eärwen’s waist and the net of silver fitted to the crown of Eärwen’s head, eyes drawn to the way the shimmery silver-green of Eärwen’s tunic glistered in the candlelight, before rousing herself to speak. “I…” Her voice was a little strange, but not in any way that Eärwen thought she had heard from her before. But then Anairë straightened, shaking her head as if shaking cobwebs out of her mind, and nodded. “Yes, I am ready.”

If that had been interest seeping into evaluation… Eärwen had worn finer clothes in Anairë’s presence before. Come to think of it, she’d worn finer jewelry in Anairë’s presence. If that had been interest, though, especially if Anairë had somehow puzzled out what exactly the Festival of Shells was, well… Well. Eärwen could hardly _complain_ about it, especially considering that Anairë hadn’t come to her complaining of any deception or some such, at least not yet. She’d not stayed in her guest quarters out of protest. That was encouraging.

Of course, it was only encouraging if Anairë had already managed to work out what the festival was about.

She’d figure it out herself soon enough, though, if she hadn’t already. As unfamiliar as Anairë was with the festivals of the Lindai, she was no fool, and certainly not the sort of fool who refused to use her eyes, or refused to evaluate the evidence shown to her by her eyes. Soon enough. Eärwen drew in a deep breath, trying and failing to will it to be something other than jittery. Soon enough.

Eärwen offered her a smile, and managed to be proud of herself in how normal the smile felt on her face. “Shall we go, then?” She offered Anairë her arm. “If we wait too long, the best of what the vendors have to offer will have already been snatched up.”

Her smile widened, heart fluttering ever so slightly, when Anairë closed the gap between them and took Eärwen’s proffered arm. Anairë’s skin was soft and cool against Eärwen’s, the thin, fine hair on her arm whispering against Eärwen’s skin. And hopefully, once Eärwen had had resolution one way or another, she would no longer be quite so hyper-aware of things like that.

One of the advantages of living in a palace during every moment when you aren’t visiting other cities is that, once you’ve been living there for long enough, the palace no longer holds any secrets for you. You know exactly where to find anyone who lives or works in there with you, if they are where they are supposed to be in the hour where you are looking, or, if you know them well enough, even when they _aren’t_ quite where they are supposed to be. You know the best spots to go to when you want a few minutes—or a few hours, perhaps—of time when you can have peace and quiet and no one will come to bother you. You know the best spots to go to to get the best view of the Sea in peace and in storm. And, most crucially, you know all of the ways in and out of the palace that do not involve going through the main gates and the entrance hall.

“Convenient,” Anairë muttered, as Eärwen lifted the latch on a small side door by the western guardhouse. “I wonder if we’re actually _allowed_ to use this door.”

“I live to please,” Eärwen said wryly in response. “And whether or not you’re _allowed_ to use a door isn’t exactly relevant when it’s _your_ house, and you are the daughter of the master of the house.”

“Let’s hope that logic holds if either the king or queen catch us using this door.”

“My parents are likely already down in the city somewhere. My brothers pestered them to take them to see the swan-dancers in the main square until they finally gave in.”

Under normal circumstances, Eärwen would have been expected to join the five of them there. The Festival of Shells was what it was, of course, but the royal family was expected to go places as a group during all of the festivals in Alqualondë. Her parents didn’t understand exactly for what purpose she had invited Anairë here—Eärwen thought she would have been subjected to quite a bit more teasing if _either_ of them had ever sussed it out—but they seemed to understand enough not to insist when Eärwen kept trying to slip out of the lion’s share of her typical duties when it came to festival planning and attendance. If only for this year, she was allowed to attend the Festival of Shells as a typical festival-goer, and for that, she could be nothing but grateful.

Outside the palace walls, the susurrus of voices was a little stronger than it had been within, though the wind also being stronger outside of the palace walls, the two were mingled together, and it was difficult to judge volume quite as accurately as Eärwen might have been able to if the endless winds blustering through Alqualondë ever chose to still for even an hour.

The path that stretched out before them branched out, two branches, one trailing off to the left, and one shooting straight ahead. Both were lined with palm trees that had become what certain of the Ñoldor, and certain of the Lindai as well, if Eärwen was being very honest about some of the shortcomings of her people, rather overgrown, and thus, the paths were obscured after just a short way. Eärwen knew where they both led, and could picture both of the streets they emptied out onto when there was nothing special going on. She could also picture the streets as they would appear during a festival, especially a festival like this.

Go left, and head towards one of the major market squares. It was not the _main_ square of Alqualondë, nor one of the squares that bore Alqualondë’s many, many fountains—with the Sea so close nearby, Alqualondë did not feel quite as intense a need for fountains as did Tirion, but fountains properly constructed were beautiful to behold, and why turn down a chance for greater beauty, in a peaceful land such as this, when there was no risk to the beauty, when there was no corruption to the beauty?—but it was one of the squares where you would find the greatest concentration of shops and open-air stalls, and one of the squares where you would find the greatest concentration of festival displays and tables and stalls and, yes, festival-goers. Eärwen had gone to that particular square nearly every year that the festival had been held—hardly as if she could _avoid_ it, since the festival was wont to go on for several days—and you would find some of the best, most flavorful baked goods there during the entirety of the festival. It was certainly somewhere everyone who was in Alqualondë during the Festival of Shells should visit at least once.

Go straight, and head towards one of the residential areas that had agreed to host part of the festivities of the Festival of Shells—not every residential area in the city _would_ agree to that, as there were many who had cited the presence of small children in their neighborhoods who needed plenty of quiet in order to sleep, and could not go several days with disrupted sleep without that lack of peaceful sleep hurting them. This was a smaller, quieter offshoot of the festival. You wouldn’t find any street performers; they required wider streets than what you could find in this neighborhood. There would be a few stalls of baked goods, though they would not be the expert work produced in the city’s bakeries and inns and eateries, but baked goods produced in people’s homes had a charm to them in that you never quite knew exactly what it was you were going to find from year to year. And it would be quieter, less overwhelming to someone who had never experienced the festival before, to someone who sometimes seemed to become overwhelmed just in a normal feasting hall.

“This way,” Eärwen murmured, leading Anairë on straight down the path lined by slightly overgrown palm trees. “The festival will already be well underway.”

As they walked towards the residential area, as the murmuring of voices and the bright, bubbling laughter of festival-goers grew louder, as the sweet notes of flutes and fiddles drifted to Eärwen’s ears, as the commingled smells of sweet, earthy bread, of baked fruit, of sizzling meat and heady spices drifted enticingly to Eärwen’s nose, it all beckoned her forwards, but it was not what held the greater part of her attention. Her gaze kept drifting to Anairë, who had yet to disentangle her arm from Eärwen’s, who had said nothing since they had started down this path, but who was staring straight ahead of her, eyes slightly narrowed as if she was trying to make out the street that stood past the path and the trees and the lamps and the houses. It was a look that bespoke interest, interest and curiosity, and Eärwen did not think that that was just because it was what she _wished_ for it to speak of. Interested enough that perhaps…

Ah, but she was fretting without cause, at least without any cause _yet_. They hadn’t even gotten to the street yet.

“Should we stay together?” Anairë was asking her uncertainly, as they walked through a narrow alley, side-stepping rain barrels and discarded crates. “I… I’m not certain I would know how to get back to the palace, if we separated.”

“We had better stay together, then.” Eärwen fixed a grin to her mouth that she could not decide whether it showed too many teeth, or too little. “Can’t have you wandering around Alqualondë until you finally wander your way back into the palace again.”

Anairë wrinkled her nose. “I don’t think it would take me _hours_.”

“Oh, no. Since you wouldn’t ask anyone for help, it might well take you _days_.”

Anairë opened her mouth as if to retort, but then snapped it shut once more. She rolled her eyes, and tucked her arm more securely through the crook of Eärwen’s elbow. “If you have so little confidence in my capabilities, I suppose I better had stay with you. I wonder—“ her mouth curled slyly, not quite a smile, in the way that sly movements of Ñoldo mouths were almost never smiles “—if you would even go looking for me, if I got lost.”

“I’d have my father’s best hunting hounds on your trail within the hour,” Eärwen told her staunchly.

The slyness dripped out of Anairë’s mouth in a torrent. She stopped dead in her tracks in the alley, forcing—well, not really _forcing_ , but keeping moving would have obliged Eärwen to disentangle her arm from Anairë’s, and she was less than eager to resort to such a measure—Eärwen to stop alongside her. Anairë frowned up into Eärwen’s face. “Your father hunts? I hadn’t thought King Olwë the sort to enjoy that. I would have thought he would enjoy… I don’t even know if this is _real_ , or if it’s just something my ridiculous cousins made up, but I’ve heard tell that some of the Falmari enjoy hunting sharks out in the water.”

A startled laugh jarred from Eärwen’s mouth. “Ah… Yes, yes, some of us do. I wonder how the tales of such might have been twisted by the time they get to the Calacirya.”

Anairë quirked one of her finely-plucked eyebrows. “The ones I’ve heard are so outlandish that I could barely credit any of them. I can’t imagine how much more outlandish they would have to be before they would be obviously false, if the ones _I_ heard sounded obviously false to start with.”

“And perhaps they are. I can’t claim to know your cousins, or where they’re getting their information from.” Most likely from the latest throwaway novel put out from Tirion’s famously active publishing houses. “But if you can remember any of those tales you’ve heard, I’d like to hear them.”

Anairë swayed backwards a little, as if seeking the steady support of the nearest wall to shore her up, but at the last moment, she seemed to think better of it (perhaps wondering what the rough stone of the wall would do to her dress if pressed too closely against it, or perhaps wondering if that might not offend the owner of the house she would have been leaning against) and stood up perfectly straight instead. “Very well.” She shook her head, gaze momentarily dropping down to the ground. “If nothing else, it should be good for amusing us both, though since the tales will be fresh for you, if indeed they are exaggerations or falsehoods, you may derive greater amusement from them than I.”

Alright, now Eärwen _was_ curious. She nodded encouragingly.

With a dismissive wave of her free hand, Anairë said, “Oh, it’s just the usual ridiculous stories, the ones that strive to make the Falmari sound as if they’re savages who only emerged from the Sea yesterday. I hear stories…” She paused, breaking off to suck in a breath that almost sounded like a deprecating laugh, and when Eärwen leaned forward, squinting a little, she thought she could see dull red color crawling up Anairë’s neck. “…I hear stories about Falmari sailors diving over the side of their ships with fishing spears and doing combat with sharks in the middle of the open Sea.”

Eärwen could not help it; her mouth began to wobble uncontrollably.

Spotting the movement, Anairë went on quickly, “Like I said, _ridiculous_. I don’t know much about sharks, but one does learn a few things from having a certain someone as their friend, and I cannot help but think that that is more likely to result in many dead Falmari sailors than it is to result in cuts of shark on Alqualondë’s dinner tables. Ridiculous.”

“We… we actually do fish for shark sometimes.”

Anairë looked as dubious as if she expected Eärwen to burst out into a laughing denial.

“We _do_ , Anairë. Just not as often as we did in Endóre. It’s easier to be picky about our food, here. Less of a need to bite into something that might bite back.” Eärwen was fairly certain she had stepped on a baby shark in the shallows of the Bay of Balar once, when she was yet a child. Maybe better not to tell Anairë that. “And we fish with spears, as well. But the two aren’t…” Eärwen made a vague gesture with her hand, before realizing that she didn’t know just what gesture she was after, and let her hand fall still. “We don’t really mix the two. It’s much safer to fish for sharks by net, or by fishing rod and hook.”

To say that Anairë looked any less dubious would have been an unfortunate lie, though thankfully there was some interest starting to trickle in as well. “And have you ever…” She raised her eyebrows meaningfully.

Without the slightest inflection, “No.”

Not for lack of trying on her own part. Though the idea no longer appealed to Eärwen, as an adult who found her responsibilities fulfilling enough not to need any spicing up and who had a good idea of her body’s limitations and just how difficult it was for one of the Ellalië to regrow limbs or digits once they had been liberated from the main body, she had not always been an adult. Once, Eärwen had been a teenager who neither found her responsibilities fulfilling, nor had the proper sense of what it would be like to spend the rest of eternity with a prosthetic foot that she could have avoided needing through even slightly better sense, and thus, the idea of fishing for sharks had appealed to her quite a bit.

Her parents had shot that idea down before it could even find its legs to stand up from the ground. Given that Eärwen was still here to report on this fact, she would think that such would be obvious.

Anairë made a face. “ _Good_. I would have had to adjust my assessment of your intelligence _considerably_ , otherwise.”

“You can tell me all about it later.”

With that, they stepped out from the alley into the street.

Eärwen was pleased to find her hopes regarding the street to be correct. Though it was considerably quieter here than it would have been in any of the market squares of Alqualondë, let alone the greatest of their number, there was still a reasonable amount of activity, enough to fill their time for a couple of hours or so, if they chose to go down the line and stop for even a few moments at every display.

The street was lined with tents of every hue imaginable, from brightest yellow to deepest blue, scarlet to verdant green, large and small, round and square and rectangular and pyramid in shape. From some, Eärwen discerned the glint of metal, the telltale sign of tables laden down with jewelry or metal sculptures or tools for a forge, or various other sundries. From others, she caught hints of other splashes of colors—and oh, she hoped that one artist who did portraits was back again this year; it probably wouldn’t have been appropriate for Eärwen to sit for one herself (everyone became very anxious of doing anything with a portrait of Eärwen that Eärwen herself might disapprove of, and any attempts on her part to explain that she knew it was being put together quickly and wasn’t going to be an exact replica of her face were more likely than not to fall on deaf ears), but Anairë might like to watch the artist at her work, especially considering that odd brushstroke technique the artist was so fond of. And from many, many of those tents, there came the delicious aroma of cooking food, all of the scents Eärwen had picked up on earlier only stronger now, still distinct despite the same gentle gusts of air carrying them to her nose.

The musicians hadn’t set themselves up under tents. Neither had many of the vendors hoping to sell larger sculptures, or pre-made paintings, and there was one who had made knitted hats and was clearly regretting the choice not to find a tent for herself, but such as it was, there were close to a hundred knitted hats in varying shades of blue and yellow and pink and orange shivering gently in the breeze, and a harried-looking vendor rushing to secure each of them to their wooden mannequin heads with clips. Everyone was walking to and fro, there was no one flow of traffic, children were darting out from between the legs of the adults, and even now, Eärwen could hear the strains of an argument brewing regarding the proper use of conch shells.

Eärwen didn’t bother biting back a smile. Why should she, when the festival was exactly as she had hoped it would be?

As they started to go down the row of tents, one at a time and slowly, Eärwen wasn’t the only one who was taking note of their surroundings, of the goods for sale and display, if the general atmosphere of the festival. Anairë looked upon the sculptures and paintings—alas, the artist who did portraits was nowhere to be found—with intense interest, and if she rarely expressed overt interest in buying something, Eärwen would admit that that was less important to her than Anairë not being cripplingly bored of her surroundings. She must have seen so much like this, and even more, back in Tirion, for though the festivals in Tirion and Valmar had considerably less in the way of goods for sale—the Vaniai seemed to think there was something at least mildly sacrilegious about it—the Ñoldor _did_ have market days, and special market days set aside for those trying out new things in the way of selling, at that. The Ñoldor being the kind of people that they were, Anairë would have seen a thousand experimental sculptures of copper wire, a thousand different knick-knacks made by an eager and only slightly nervous young craftsman, hoping to find a market interest in the purchase of their particular trinkets. She would have seen probably closer to ten thousand pieces of jewelry made by amateurs rather than jewel-smiths, and probably would have come across at least a couple of artists willing to do portraits on the fly. That she could have experienced all of that, and yet still look upon the wares for sale or display in the tents on this street with such obvious interest, eyes poring over every piece, it was encouraging. It was gratifying.

That wasn’t all Anairë was drinking in of their surroundings, and Eärwen did not notice this latter bit of observation at the first. There was something else regarding the festival that was typical enough to be spotted in some greater or lesser extent every year it was held, and someone as sharp-eyed as Anairë was bound to notice it sooner or later.

Families went to the festival together often. Younger children formed packs who roamed the tents unsupervised and stole sweets from the corners of heavily-laden tables. Some people went out alone, for there were always those who went out alone. But what was more predominant than all of these, were the people who had ventured out into the streets in pairs. Men and women, mostly, but likely more because of the Valar’s edicts than because it was the natural way of things, and there were plenty who bucked these edicts with aplomb, especially out here, where the Valar felt a considerably more distant consideration.

Eärwen and Anairë slowly moved from tent to tent, and as they made their way down, gradually, Anairë stopped paying so much attention to the wares laid out for her consideration, instead regarding the other pairs of Ellalië out perusing the stalls with considerably greater intensity.

Pale eyes lingered on intertwined hands, on arms around shoulders, on shoulders that knocked against each other gently. Pale eyes narrowed further and further, the more pairs Anairë watched.

Eärwen said nothing. Her voice had been replaced by a static structure of mingled dread and anticipation. It would not return to her until it was summoned. Eärwen had wanted her to notice sooner. She hadn’t wanted her to notice until later. She had wanted to tell Anairë herself, to ask— But, oh, she had also wanted Anairë to broach the subject herself, and with this many contradictory thoughts in her mind, small wonder that Eärwen could not find her voice without its service being demanded.

After they exited the fifth tent, they were standing close to another alley. The breeze had picked up a little while they were inside, and though Eärwen was not quite ready to acknowledge it, she found herself acknowledging it all the same: on the wind—a proper wind, now—there was a small hint of rain. Hopefully, the hint would grow no stronger, or else, if it did, the storm would push out to Sea instead of bearing down on Alqualondë. Around here, there were a few people who, judging by the looks on their faces, were entertaining the same thoughts as Eärwen. None of them looked particularly happy to be entertaining.

“Eärwen?” There was nothing in Anairë’s voice that hinted at any emotion, any at all. When Eärwen looked down at her, there was nothing in Anairë’s _face_ that hinted at any emotion, any at all.

So, yes, definitely not the best sign Eärwen could have received.

Anairë nodded to the alley, and in that same not-giving-even-the-smallest-thing-away voice, she asked, “May we speak? I feel I have a few questions for you.”

That inscrutability was short-lived. The moment they were deep enough in the alley that they would not have been immediately visible to passersby, Anairë sank her free hand into Eärwen’s arm and hissed, “This is a lovers’ festival!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Calacirya** —“Cleft of Light” (Quenya); a mountain pass in the Pelóri, in which was located the hill of Túna and the city of Tirion. It is mentioned that the Calacirya was “made” in the same year that the Vanyar and Ñoldor first reached Aman, suggesting that it was created by one or several of the Valar in order to allow the Elves into Aman without having to cross the Pelóri. After the hiding of Valinor when the Pelóri Mountains were raised higher, the Calacirya was the only gap left in the mountains, left there because the Elves still needed to breathe the air brought by the wind over the sea from Middle-Earth where they were born, and because this would have left the Falmari completely isolated from the Vanyar and the Ñoldor (No mention is made of what would have become of the remaining Ñoldor, considering that their city was located within the Calacirya).  
>  **Corollairë** —possibly a compressed version of ‘Coron Oiolairë’, meaning “Mound of Ever-Summer” (Quenya). One of the names for the mound on which the Two Trees of Valinor grew.  
>  **Ellalië** —the Telerin form of 'Eldalië'; 'the Elven-Folk', usually a term used to refer to all of the Elves, though generally someone speaking of the Eldalië is not referring to the Avari.  
>  **Endóre** —Middle-Earth (Quenya)  
>  **Falmari** —those among the Teleri who completed the journey to Aman; the name is derived from the Quenya falma, '[crested] wave.'  
>  **Lindai** —an old clan-name for the Lindar, the name the Nelyar used to refer to themselves, which means ‘Singers’ (Telerin)  
>  **Vaniai** —the Telerin Quenya equivalent of 'Vanyar'


	6. Chapter Six

“It’s a _sweethearts’_ festival,” Eärwen clarified, though she doubted much that her clarification could stand up against the force of Anairë’s scowl. “Despite what the Vaniai might have told you—“ and now, she was scowling herself, though with somewhat less force than Anairë, since the gossip had had some time to dissipate “—we don’t really go for orgies. Sex is an activity we prefer to keep private, _without_ prying eyes.”

Where the Vaniai had picked up that rumor in the first place, Eärwen had been unable to figure out in all her years of trying to track down the source, though if she ever _did_ find the progenitor of those rumors, a few stern words was the least of what they would have to worry about. The rumors had gotten all the way to the top levels, and it had been nearly ten years before diplomatic relations between the Lindai and the Vaniai could resume with the sort of amicability they had enjoyed before, and Eärwen couldn’t even tell anyone _why_ Ingwë’s second and third daughters kept sneering at her whenever she made diplomatic visits, let alone why Ingwë wouldn’t let _any_ member of his family make diplomatic visits to Alqualondë.

Rumors. Yes, Eärwen should be careful about rumors. She should have been more careful in this moment about innuendo, as well, but the knowledge had only returned to her after she and Anairë had already been out here together, in full view of the public, for over an hour, and though it wasn’t like every person they came across since then dropped what they were doing and bowed to Eärwen, Eärwen had a hard time believing that none of them had _recognized_ her. Too late to have acted differently, though the glitter in Anairë’s eyes made it clear what she thought about _that_. She could only move forward.

Though given the way Anairë’s lips were thinning, it seemed that the only place Eärwen had to move forward into was the street of regret.

“I had no fear of things moving so far as all that,” Anairë told her, and her voice was thankfully only frosty instead of entirely wintry, though the glower she pinned Eärwen with was not exactly what _anyone_ in Eärwen’s position would have regarded as encouragement. “Things rarely move so far so quickly, especially not on the very first outing.”

Eärwen smiled without much humor. “Indeed.”

They were silent for a few, long moments, moments in which Anairë’s glare broke and she broke off as well, drawing a little further back into the shadows, away from Eärwen. She was fiddling with her bracelet, brow deeply furrowed, eyes locked on the opposite wall from where she stood. Deep in thought, and Eärwen had little desire to break whatever train her thoughts were on. At least she _was_ thinking, thinking and not shouting.

Had she been wrong? Eärwen’s stomach churned as she waited for Anairë to look at her again and, at last, to speak. Had she been wrong about all of it?

Eventually, Anairë drew a deep breath through her nose and folded her arms around her chest. “You…” She squeezed her eyes shut. “I suppose you might have noticed that I don’t particularly appreciate being tricked into things. Perhaps you haven’t noticed the _intensity_ with which I don’t appreciate it, since you’ve never had to watch someone else find out how I react, and this would be the first time _you_ have tried your luck. But I believe I have spoken to you regarding it before, have I not?

Eärwen might, actually. When she thought about it, she could remember Anairë’s complaining _vehemently_ to her of a cousin having tricked her into making a purchase for them that she had not at all _wanted_ to make when this cousin had first come to her and asked. Anairë had gone on and on about how her aunt and uncle and her parents had just laughed it off when she had gone to them seeking redress, and how they had in fact told her that it was her own fault for not being more careful with her own money. Anairë had gotten a bit repetitive in her complaints after a while, and Eärwen hadn’t really been listening after the first ten minutes or so, but now, now, staring into Anairë’s hard eyes, she rather wished she had.

As it was, there was nothing to do but nod and hope she didn’t too obviously smell like she was sweating straight through her shirt. The nod spoke for itself. Any attempt to trivialize would no doubt speak for itself as well, and in truly adverse fashion.

The hardness broke a little out of Anairë’s eyes, though they were by no means _soft_. “Well, I don’t. Everyone thinks it’s just having a little bit of fun at my expense, but to me, it’s about my _trust_ , and how easy it seems to be for others to abuse it.”

Eärwen didn’t even nod this time. Nodding felt distinctly unsafe.

“This isn’t…” Anairë pressed her fingertips to her brow, looking away. For a moment, she _almost_ smiled, but that moment was fleeting and Eärwen could not convince herself that she had not simply imagined it. “This is not the same as tricking me into using my money to buy something I earlier would not consent to. Some would no doubt say it’s worse, but this feels…” She trailed off, frowning deeply. Then, she fixed Eärwen in another long stare. “Why did you not tell me what this festival was at the start?”

Heart hammering in her chest, Eärwen sucked in a breath. “That’s…” She could not find the words at first, and Anairë just stared at her with something too taut to be patience. Finally, when she could force her voice into some semblance of evenness, Eärwen began to speak. “I will not lie. I do not think you would like that.”

“True enough,” Anairë muttered, mouth twisting mulishly.

“I did wish to surprise you. I thought you might balk if I told you what the Festival of Shells actually was, though whether that would be because you thought it more sexual than it actually was, or if—“

And now, she could not find words, once again.

Not that Anairë seemed at all interested in letting Eärwen get out of this because she was having a hard time putting words in her mouth that would not have felt like stinging herself with the stinger of one of the Spiders of Avathar. She just kept staring steadily up into Eärwen’s face, waiting, and if Eärwen thought that Anairë’s ears had started to flush a dull pink, that had absolutely no effect on the quality of her gaze; the whole time, Anairë’s eyes never left Eärwen’s face.

Well, Eärwen supposed Anairë was owed an explanation. And Eärwen had planned to bring it up herself eventually, though she rather wished it didn’t have to be like this. _If I do not tell her true, she may never consent to come back here with me again. She may pull away from me entirely, and become some sort of polite near-stranger. Or maybe not so polite, but either way, could I live with that?_

No, Eärwen did not think that she could.

Eärwen tried to smile. Failed. Sucked in a deep breath through her nose, and just went for it.

“I was also afraid that if I told you the exact nature of the festival, you might refuse to accompany me here, because you did not regard me in such a light, and did not wish to. I was afraid you would simply reject me.”

Anairë did not look surprised. Eärwen couldn’t decide if that was better or not.

“Is that all, then?” Anairë asked her, with a softness in her voice that could have meant many things, some good and some ill, but at least there was no shouting, which would have been just uniformly ill.

“I… I also wished that you might grow fonder of Alqualondë. She is my city, after all, and I am proud of her.” This was easier to speak of, if only just. Speaking of the last bit had felt a little like tearing a scab off of a wound, but it also felt as if she’s torn the scab off too soon, and there was still blood oozing on her skin. “I wished for you to be fond of her as well. To be proud.”

Tilting her head to one side, Anairë remarked, “I do not believe I have ever felt that way regarding you and Tirion. But then—“ she stared past Eärwen, out into the street “—I did not help _build_ Tirion. I suppose there is a difference.” She shut her eyes. “Eärwen…”

The pause was long enough that even if Eärwen had not been invited to speak into it, she thought that Anairë might not be too angry about the silence being filled up with words. “I can see now how much you would rather know exactly what will happen when you get where you are going. And I can see that surprising you falls so close to tricking you that there are times when the two cannot help but mingle, even if I did not wish it so. I…” The words were trying not to come, Eärwen’s pounding heart was telling her not to say them, not to say anything that would have felt like gouging her heart with a knife, but if she wished to stay even friends, it needed to be said, needed, needed, needed… “It was presumptuous of me to assume anything about what you would prefer. I should not have presumed upon you, should not have intimated any level of attachment that does not exist…”

“And who says it does not exist?”

Eärwen clamped her mouth shut again, and willed her heart not to crawl out of her throat. She… actually couldn’t remember the last time she had shut her mouth so quickly. But it felt as if she would wake from some sort of dream if she opened it again without being prompted, so all words, all questions and demands, stayed locked behind her teeth.

Anairë frowned up at her. “I did not think I was being that subtle. Or that you were that obtuse.” She shrugged. “Ah, if it’s either of them, more likely to be the former. Still, I should think you would have at least _spoken_ to me regarding it.”

“What do you—“

Clicking her tongue, Anairë took Eärwen’s face in her hands, yanked her head down, and kissed her.

Briefly. And in this, it was so typically Anairë: prim and delicate, uncertain and thus absolutely unwilling to overstep by even an inch. But it was still one of the best things Eärwen had felt thus far in her life, and she would have liked for it to go on longer—a _lot_ longer, if they hadn’t been standing in an alley that spilled into what was currently quite a busy street.

“Do not mistake me, Eärwen.” Anairë’s tone was stern, but she was smiling, her eyes dancing in a way Eärwen had not seen in a while. “I do not appreciate the deception, and I shall appreciate it even less if there is a repeat occurrence. You and I may have to communicate solely by letters and by notes, in such an eventuality. But…” She reached out, flicking a bit of lint off of Eärwen’s shoulder. “But I will not lie. A large part of my annoyance with you is rooted in the fact that we have appeared in public as sweethearts without my being able to enjoy any of the aspects of _actually_ being sweethearts.”

Eärwen laughed, relieved. “I will keep that in mind for later.”

“Well, I should hope so!” Anairë turned her gaze back towards the lamp-lit street. “Now, shall we go back out? I know there are days left, but I have hardly seen anything there is to see here, and I wish to truly _see_ it.”

And so, hand in hand, they went.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Avathar** —‘The Shadows’ (adapted from Valarin; the name isn’t derived from Quenya, or any other Elvish language); a land in the southeast of Aman, located at the feet of the Pelóri on the shore of the Great Sea south of the Bay of Eldamar. Much of the land was eroded away by the Sea, leaving a narrow strip of shoreline. There dwelled Ungoliant before the years of the Sun and the Moon; she had taken the form of a Spider, devoured all light that touched the land, and woven dark webs.  
>  **Lindai** —an old clan-name for the Lindar, the name the Nelyar used to refer to themselves, which means ‘Singers’ (Telerin)  
>  **Vaniai** —the Telerin Quenya equivalent of 'Vanyar'


	7. Chapter Seven

Eärwen felt…

Actually, she did not think she could get into how she felt without leaning heavily on the clichés often employed by the writers of the romance novels that were such a big hit in Tirion. The romance novels had surprised Eärwen at the start, for she would have thought that the greater part of Tirion’s readership would have scorned them, no doubt deeming them hopelessly frivolous. But when she thought about it a little longer, the more sense it made—ah, Ñoldor and their passions.

Eärwen did not think she could get into how she was feeling without leaning harder than was wise on clichés. Yes, they had become clichés for a reason, and some of them, even Eärwen found genuinely entertaining, but they were not reflective of real life, and it was unwise to rely on them as if they were.

She would try to describe it, anyways. She had come far enough that it seemed only fair to at least _try_.

That she felt happy should come as no surprise. Those of you who have been in the same position as Eärwen can well imagine her happiness. Promises of what the future would hold were not locked in, not by a longshot, but it seemed so much easier to imagine it, now, than she had before. The sweetness of a new relationship buoyed her, heading like strong ale, delicate and light like pale pink wine. She felt as if she regarded all the world around her with entirely new eyes.

What she had already regarded with fondness, she now looked upon as if it was the best and brightest and most beautiful she had ever seen. Eärwen could not find even the most piddling of faults with the tents, or their wares, or with the food that was being cooked, or the children who kept swiping tarts off of that one table in that one tent around the middle of the procession, nor the quality of the fiddle-playing from that one fiddler who other fiddlers insisted had never tuned a fiddle a day in his life. She had no idea how long that would all last—certainly, the stealing would start to wear once it had reached the point where the seller finally noticed it was happening, and out-of-tune fiddle-playing, even if it was only slightly out-of-tune, could not stay pleasant to the ears forever. But for as long as it chose to last, Eärwen would be glad of it. She was having entirely too good of a time to let the real world intrude upon her, just yet.

Anairë was as she ever was. One might expect her to have changed at least somewhat in Eärwen’s perceptions, but while ‘one’ was entitled to their opinion, Eärwen was just as entitled to never give head to it for even a single moment. Anairë was wholly and entirely herself, and Eärwen would not have changed that for the world.

As it stood, perhaps the reasons piddling faults were currently escaping Eärwen’s notice and care came down to the fact that she would rather stare at Anairë’s face. Or her profile, when they were wholly side-by-side, and Eärwen would not have been able to look at Anairë’s face head-on without breaking her neck. Even if there were future visits, and Eärwen _certainly_ hoped there would be, Anairë was leaving Alqualondë behind her in a matter of days, and the next opportunity for them to meet in person would not be for several months. Best to drink in as much of her now as she could, while Eärwen yet had the opportunity.

At last, a cloud dampened the happy light of Eärwen’s thoughts. Yes, Anairë would be going home in just a few days. Anairë was not what anyone would call politically active, but she was still nobility to both the Ñoldor and the Vaniai, and high nobility to the Vaniai, at that. She had certain obligations, even if only to her family, and unless there was some more binding agreement between them in the future, Anairë could not just move here. Eärwen had been rather unrealistic about her hopes, when she was honest with herself—and if she could not be honest with herself _now_ , there really was no hope.

What was she supposed to do, then? Eärwen had heard of long courtships, courtships where a lot of the courting took place primarily through letters, but had all of those couples had so little time together before finding themselves obliged to switch entirely to letter-writing? What was _that_ supposed to do for a relationship, and one between adults, at that?

“Aren’t you hungry?”

When Eärwen dragged herself out of her own increasingly gloomy thoughts, Anairë was looking up at her with one finely-plucked eyebrow raised. When Eärwen did not answer her in what Anairë seemed to think the appropriate amount of time, Anairë went on, “It’s been quite some time since we left the palace. I cannot tell time as well here as I could in Tirion—“ and here, frustration bled into her face for just a moment “—but I think it has been a few hours, at least. We haven’t eaten since we left the palace, and we’ve been walking the whole time. Aren’t you hungry?”

Code for ‘ _I’m_ hungry,’ or at least Eärwen suspected as much. Anairë made no sign of it in her face, but if Eärwen had been walking for hours, so had Anairë, and Anairë had not eaten much at breakfast. Ah, well. It wasn’t a conversation Eärwen felt like having right now, and even if it was, Eärwen had a feeling that after the conversation they had just had in the alley, she wasn’t going to be in a position to point out things Anairë wasn’t being clear about for a _long_ while, both because Anairë would have been quicker to point out her hypocrisy than she would have been to _breathe_ , and because Eärwen thought that lightning could well have come down out of a cloudless sky to strike her down. That, or Eärwen’s hair would randomly catch on fire. She wasn’t surer which would be the case.

And yes, when Eärwen thought about it, she _was_ hungry. She had been walking around for several hours, after all. Eärwen smiled. “You’ve never had street food in Alqualondë, have you?”

“I do not know when I would have had the opportunity.”

“And that’s all I needed to know. Let’s go find something special.”

Eärwen had had much experience of the street food of Alqualondë, herself. It might not be considered entirely appropriate for the princess to be trawling the stalls and the dimly-lit little hole-in-the-wall eateries, but her father broke bread in the taverns down by the quays, her mother spent much of her time in company with some not always entirely upright medical students, and who even knew what Eärwen’s brothers would get up to, once they were old enough to get up to anything? In Tirion, she knew it would have caused a bit of a stir. In Valmar… Eärwen did not know about Valmar. She had not attended Valmar nearly as often, and had no idea if the city of the Vaniai even _had_ such establishments. The Vaniai’s inclinations seemed to run in entirely different directions.

Many of the vendors of the food stalls of Alqualondë made good money during the Festival of Shells, for in such an atmosphere, there were many who did not wish to take any of their meals in their homes, when they could have gone to a food stall instead and gotten something to eat out under the stars, sharing in the feeling of community and happiness that came from such an event. Especially not considering—

Eärwen’s mother poked gentle fun at her sheer love of greasy, piping hot fried foods, sometimes. Well, _Mother_ , it wasn’t as if she could have ever gotten such food on the other side of the Sea, when everything they used to make batter was much better off being used for other purposes. Eärwen wasn’t quite yet at the point of saying that foods fried in the sweet, crispy batter common in Alqualondë represented the new lives they had forged for themselves in the Blessed Realm, but she was close.

Street food in Tirion was alright, but Eärwen had never loved it the way she loved the street food in Alqualondë. A distinct lack of fish and other seafood would tend to skew her judgment somewhat, but she thought that only natural. Anairë, if she had ever eaten much in the way of street food, and Eärwen supposed that she _could_ have, for even if she had a hard time imagining it of Anairë, she did not ever come across as the sort of person who would have refused food if she was halfway across the city from home, she was hungry, and the most expedient means of getting food was to buy it from a stall. Maybe they could speak on that. Eärwen thought she would like to compare the differences. Maybe Anairë knew a few good stalls.

After they had eaten, of course. If they tried to hold this conversation before they had eaten, Eärwen was only going to make herself miserable, and it would have been entirely her own fault.

And after some looking, Eärwen was able to find a vendor she had frequented before, both during the Festival of Shells, and when she was out and about in Alqualondë at a time when she knew that a meal would have been served in the palace, and knew also that no one in her family was there to eat it with her if she rushed home, for even her brothers, young as they were, had friends among the other children of Alqualondë, and periodically took meals in their homes. Did she still have the— Ah, yes, she did. Eärwen did not dare sneak a glance at Anairë, not wishing Anairë to guess at what was going through her mind.

“I hope you’ll like this one,” Eärwen said brightly. “It’s one of my favorites.”

A few minutes later saw them sitting on the stoop of a house whose windows were all dark and shuttered, though only after Eärwen had assured Anairë that they would get up and find somewhere else to eat if the residents returned and took exception to their presence. Given their circumstances, Eärwen doubted too much of a fuss would be raised, so long as they stayed on the bottom step and did not go onto the stoop itself. Just looking around, there were plenty of other people eating on the steps of stoops of houses that Eärwen knew could not possibly be theirs. Not all of them. It was another part of the festival, even if it was one made possible primarily by the assurances that breaking into people’s houses and stealing their belongings would meet with stringent punishment, and then actually carrying those stringent punishments out. (This was the Blessed Realm. That did not mean that that bliss was absolute, or that it required no maintenance whatsoever. Bliss required quite a bit more maintenance than terror, actually.)

The vendor did just as good work as Eärwen remembered; the fact that she was having to produce larger volumes of food in shorter amounts of time made no difference at all to the quality. Eärwen and Anairë had carried away from her stall bowls of shrimp and scallops and mussels and calamari fried in crispy golden batter, seated on a bed of gleaming noodles seasoned with garlic and paprika and the assortment of vegetables they had been stir-fried with. It was greasy, and wonderfully so. It was so hot it would scald the roof of your mouth in moments, and that was what the waterskins they had just refilled were for. Sometimes, it was easier to taste the batter than the seafood that had been fried in it, and, well, the batter was so good that Eärwen failed to see why that would be an issue. The noodles, of which Eärwen had always suspected had ground cinnamon mixed in with the flour, were always wonderfully flavorful.

Anairë seemed to like it, given that she was eating about as quickly as she could without crossing the line from gentility into sheer, impolite desperation, taking great, big bites of noodles and vegetables and fried-and-battered seafood that flagged only slightly in size and speed when she encountered something so searingly hot that she was obliged immediately to reach for her waterskin. Perhaps that had more to do with hunger, than with any personal indication. Certainly, Eärwen would have thought that Anairë would have asked about the seaweed by now, or the other greens scattered about the noodles that she would never have eaten before and had no way of recognizing, since they had not been served at the table in the palace when Anairë had eaten from it, and since they were not anything that grew on the land, and they were not popular enough among the Ñoldor for exports to really take off. Anairë had shown much more curiosity about unfamiliar food the first time she had come here.

That last, stray thought clung to Eärwen’s mind, irritating the fabric of her mind like a splinter under her skin. It bothered her, and she did not know why. It was… It was something she would just have to try to put from her mind.

“So.”

Anairë had been so engrossed with her food that it had not even occurred to Eärwen that she might speak to her again before she had completely demolished her meal. When she chose to do just this, looking up from her bowl for the first time since they had sat down, Eärwen started. She could not really help it.

“So,” Eärwen echoed, more cautiously than she had intended.

“You—“ Anairë waved her utensil in Eärwen’s general direction, without waving it in her face “—have been markedly preoccupied since we had that…” Her face colored a little, though she did not seem embarrassed “…talk, back in the alley. I would have thought you would have been happier than this. More _talkative_ , certainly.”

“Ah, don’t mind me.” Another large bite of fried shrimp, something that did soothe Eärwen, even if it did not provide a balm for _all_ ills. After she swallowed, she felt a little more capable of saying to Anairë, “I have just been thinking about some things.”

Anairë tapped the side of her bowl, staring down at the little clump of noodles left over in the bottom, at the little ring of fried calamari sitting sadly uneaten off to the side. Eärwen tried to reach for the calamari, only to yank her hand away, laughing, when Anairë slapped her hand lightly and glared at her somewhat more heavily. “Excuse _you_. If you wish for more of that, you may return to the vendor and buy more. I imagine you could get a bowl full of just that. That is _mine_ , and I intend to eat it.”

“You must like that _very_ much. Should I be jealous?”

“Only if you find a way to get it from Alqualondë to Tirion without it completely spoiling in the process.” Anairë rolled her eyes. “Why should I ever feel the need to leave my home again, if this is something that I could eat in it?”

Eärwen should _not_ be this happy that Anairë was expressing such an opinion regarding calamari, should not, it was a stupid thing to be so happy about, and she was grinning anyways, grinning so widely that she felt as if her mouth would split her face in two. “I think I would still come around every once in a while to make sure you got out into the fresh air. And you never know, one of your siblings might have another child, and you will no doubt feel the need to quite your home for a long while after that.”

At that, Anairë grimaced, face contorting in such a way as to suggest that that next baby might find its aunt rather less affectionate than the current baby had found its aunt. Given the level of affection with which the current baby was regarded, Eärwen thought that Anairë might wind up being only slightly fonder of her next niece or nephew than Prince Fëanáro in Tirion was of his stepmother, the long-suffering and quite frankly shockingly patient Queen Indis. “I am considering appealing to some of my mother’s relatives to take me back with them to Valmar for a while. I could conduct some excellent research on the Music from Valmar that I never could in Tirion. Do you know, I’ve yet to come across a single Ñoldorin scholar in Tirion who is at all interested in pursuing that line of study? They’ve all called it frivolous, or said that the Music is not something for the Eldar to know in more than the little scraps we can pick up from the water?” Anairë set down her utensil and stared up at the sky as if imploring the stars to speak in her defense. She gesticulated with her hands, in such a way as to irresistibly remind Eärwen of someone wrapping their hands around somebody else’s throat. “And then there are the ones who, I swear to you, respond to it as if they are _frightened_ of examining the Music too closely. Can you imagine that? Can you _really_ imagine that? The Music is what makes up the fibers of our world. It is what brought Arda and everything in it besides the Ainur into being, including _us_. We would not exist without it. Why not learn more about it?”

They said— _they_ was in this case, as it was in so many cases, a nebulous term that could be made to mean many things, and Eärwen had no idea just who _they_ was supposed to be in this case, given that the definition of _they_ seemed to vary from day to day, from hour to hour, from tide to tide. Anyways, they said that the Music could be heard more clearly in the waters of the Sea than in any other water source on the face of the earth, except perhaps in the drops of rain that fell from the sky, in the mere moments the Ellalië had to observe them up close before they shattered into a thousand smaller drops once they hit the floor, and their Music was silenced forever. They said that because Ulmo and so many of his Maiar dwelled exclusively in the Sea, only coming out of it when some great need drove them, their nature as members of the Ainur put more of the Music of the Ainur, that blessed Ainulindalë, into the water in which they dwelled. All the Ellalië could hear it to some greater or lesser extent, but sometimes you could hear bars that you would never have heard anywhere else.

Sometimes, you could put a dead and empty conch to your ear, and instead of hearing the hollow lamentation of the dead thing that had once lived inside of it, instead of hearing empty dirges to broken tombs, you could hear the Ainulindalë instead, you could hear the chords and strains that had ignited the world, you could hear the crack and tear of mountains bursting from flatlands, the shifting of hundreds of thousands of tons of sand spill into the deserts, the wet and sticky opposite-of-tearing of someone knitting the bodies of all the living things of this world that were not still, unmoving plant matter together.

Eärwen had done that, sometimes. When she had done that, sometimes, she had heard things she did not expect to hear. Sometimes, she had heard things she did not expect to hear at all, things that she supposed very well _could_ have been part of the Ainulindalë, and considering that _everything_ was part of the Ainulindalë, probably were, but still felt so alien to everything Eärwen had ever known—

She was getting carried away. Personally, she agreed with Anairë. The Ainulindalë was the bedrock of Arda, was the cradle of life, was something without which none of them would have ever existed at all. Eärwen had never felt the inclination to learn as much about it as she could—it would be wrong to say that she was drawn to more worldly concerns, for she did not know how anything could be more worldly than the Music that had made the world in the first place, but it certainly was something that Eärwen did regard as being a bit beyond her and her own concerns. Why should those who had the inclination not wish to learn more about it?

Eärwen said as much to Anairë, smiling encouragingly. Around them, the wind was picking up, making the tents quiver. A few people, who had not weighted their tents properly, were cursing and lunging for whatever they could use as a weight. Eärwen did not notice it.

“Yes, that’s just what I said to him,” Anairë went on, apparently oblivious to just what she was being steered away from. “I asked him if he thought it right to shun something that he would not exist without, if he thought it _wise_ , and he spluttered and turned me out of his office that very moment.” Her gaze sharpened as she fixed Eärwen in a long stare. “But that is not what I asked you about, Eärwen. You have been preoccupied since we left the alley, and returned to the festivities here. You tell me that you have been thinking. If you care to speak of it, I would know what it is that has had you thinking for so long, putting such a look upon your face.” She gestured out towards the street. “It does not match the atmosphere here at all, that gloomy face you insist upon making. It makes me wonder if you are not remembering something you forgot to do before the festival started, and will occupy your time for the whole of the rest of it—or something like that. My imagination may have gone somewhere overly specific.”

And there was a quizzical quality to her voice that made Eärwen think that for the amount of time she spent not telling Anairë just what it was on her mind, Anairë would continue coming up with scenarios which were overly specific. On the one hand, those would likely make her laugh. On the other hand, eventually, Eärwen might wish to speak about it, but might find that it was too late.

She wasn’t certain how to speak of it.

“You will write to me, won’t you?” was what came out, in place of anything else Eärwen could have said, anything else that might have addressed the root of her thoughts instead of just one of the sprouts.

Anairë raised an eyebrow, tilting her head to peer more closely into Eärwen’s face. “I know I am not always the most attentive correspondent, but I do believe that I have responded to your past letters in a timely manner. Granted, it takes some time for our letters to reach each other, but still, I don’t think I’ve left your letters more than a few days before responding to them.”

Eärwen resisted the urge to scratch at her forearm. “You said that you might go all the way to Valmar.” The wind lashed out at them, blowing Eärwen’s hair all over her face. Through a thick veil of blinding hair (but at least it kept Anairë from looking too closely at her expressions, at least it kept Anairë from seeing anything in her face that Eärwen did not wish to show), she went on, trying to keep her voice from growing too obviously panicked, “It could take months for us to just exchange a pair of letters going from Valmar to Alqualondë, or back there again. They could be lost on the road. The courier could be eaten by a leopard.” Okay, that one was slightly less than likely—the Maiar tried their best to keep predatory animals away from the roads—but still, Eärwen’s overall point stood. “Or you might become so absorbed in studying the Music that you don’t have time to answer anyone’s letters.”

At last, Eärwen felt obliged to brush her hair out of her face… and she had to hold it in one of her hands to keep it from blowing right back into it, since the wind that had kicked up was refusing to kick down again. Somewhere not nearly distant enough for comfort, thunder rolled. The scent of rain on the air was stronger, now. Eärwen did her best to ignore that, because Anairë was staring at her, a line forming in the skin between her eyebrows.

And Anairë kept staring at her for a long moment, with that same expression on her face, the line between her eyebrows deepening to the exact same degree that her frown did, before finally answering, "I should think I will have the courtesy to set aside time for letter-writing, no matter _how_ engrossing any studies of the Music might become. Certainly—“ and here, a little bit of the lecturer’s voice returned to her, though it was only a fragment, a smaller fragment of that voice than the fragments of the Ainulindalë that Eärwen could hear when she pressed her ear to a dead and empty conch shell “—the Music is not _going_ anywhere. New chords might reveal themselves to the Eldar with the passage of centuries and millennia, but the Music will be here for as long as this earth is here. When the earth vanishes, I should think I will have more pressing problems than whether or not I must interrupt my studies to write a letter.”

“So, you will write to me, then?”

“Yes, of course.” Anairë hazarded a smile, though it looked an awful lot like she was testing out the contours of the smile on her own mouth, rather than it being something even remotely pre-prepared or pre-used. “When have you ever known me to ignore your letters? Quite frankly, Eärwen, there have been times when receiving a letter from you has been the high-point of my day—usually when a new child has been born to my family, but there have been other occasions when there has been no happier occurrence than the courier knocking on our front door with letters from Alqualondë. But that is not what this is all about; it cannot possibly be. So what—“

Anairë never finished that sentence.

There were probably a lot of people who never finished their sentences.

It was at that point that the sky opened.

Storms in Tirion did not happen all at once. Eärwen had experienced some genuinely impressive downpours during the times in which she had visited Tirion, even by the standards of one who lived on the very shores of the Sea, but those storms had invariably been hours in the making. They did not happen all at once, did not start with the pounding raindrops that battered so hard against the skin that anyone unfortunate enough to be caught outside in it would be forgiven for thinking that they were being pelted with hailstones, or just normal, run of the mill _stones_. Clouds would fulminate in the sky for hours. If there was to be thunder and lightning, the clouds would crackle with lightning and thunder for hours, sometimes _days_. The often-hot, often-humid air of Tirion would cool, and the wind would pick up. For the first few minutes, there would be a gentle drizzle, more like a mist than anything else, certainly not what Eärwen would call a _storm_. And then, only after those first few minutes with drizzle and wind and grumbling thunder, would the storm truly begin. It could last for hours, last for days, last long enough that the cobbled streets of Tirion looked more like streams or even rivers with beds of white and taupe and tawny stones, last long enough that certain people whose houses were in especially unfortunate spots on the hill might find themselves bailing water out of their homes, though Eärwen was to understand that there was some sort of building project going on, in order to make sure that that was no longer a problem for anyone living in Tirion?

Anyways, storms in Tirion could certainly be impressive, but they didn’t come on all at once. They just didn’t. Eärwen did not know what it was, though she suspected that the mountains might have had something to do with it—she was neither a geologist nor a meteorologist, and could not say what brought on storms, and what caused them to come on more quickly in some places than in others. Storms in Tirion did not come on all at once.

Storms in Alqualondë, on the other hand…

Perhaps, in the aftermath, Eärwen would reflect on the signs that she’d given little heed to when they first presented themselves to her. Perhaps she would reflect on those, and think that perhaps the storm had been apparent to her for hours. Certainly, she’d been cognizant enough of those signs to hope that the storm that must have been brewing in the south would push out to Sea, instead of slamming into Alqualondë without mercy. For now, there were no such thoughts. There were barely any thoughts at all.

In classic storm-over-Alqualondë fashion, the sky opened, and the sky opened all at once. There was no drizzle, no mist. The very first was an onslaught, great, pelting drops of rain that came down with such force and in such numbers that Eärwen immediately felt as if bruised, and Anairë immediately sprang up to her feet with a shout that sounded half-fearful and half- _furious_ , most likely in defense of her lunch, though her hair and her jewelry might have also been a concern.

They raced up the steps of the stoop to the shelter of the awning over the doorway into the empty house, any concerns about the reactions of the homeowners forgotten. Under the shelter of the awning, it was easier to just stop, easier to catch a breath, easier to watch the rain come down in seemingly endless silver sheets as other festival-goers dove for cover, as those vendors who had not secured their tents properly wrestled with those tents, alongside those few attendees who were willing to forestall their own escape to help keep the tents from being blown away in the wind that gusted the rain so strongly sideways that even when Eärwen and Anairë backed up all the way to the wall, it wasn’t always enough to keep them from being splattered.

Eärwen could only watch the rain come down and down, shaking her head and biting back a sigh. Well, there went the festival, at least for as long as it would take for anything that hadn’t been ruined to dry out. Wherever they were, Eärwen hoped that at least her younger brothers were having some fun; when they were younger, they had loved to go out in the rain and find mud puddles to splash around in, though they might have outgrown that by now. Her parents would be rather less than happy, not least because, even though they were not daunted by rain in and of itself, they would have to go around consoling everyone who had had their wares ruined by the rain, something that left them both more than a little dejected by the time they were done.

Eärwen had offered to help, but they would never accept it, saying that she was their child and this was not a happy responsibility. To that, Eärwen had argued that not every responsibility that was hers could be happy responsibilities, and that she must eventually take up responsibilities that brought her no joy, and that those responsibilities that sat more like burdens on their shoulders could be made a little lighter by being shared. But they had refused, and in markedly strong terms. So Eärwen stayed where she was, caught between wondering whether she should defy her parents in such a time as this, or whether it was better to be obedient, even when it did not sit well on her skin.

(There would be many other times when she was caught between obedience and conscience. In most of those other instances, the consequences would be much steeper.)

Beside her, Anairë was shivering a little, staring out at the rain in complete disbelief. The rain intensified, and her disbelief intensified accordingly. She was scrubbing at her arms as if warding off cold.

“Are you alright?” Eärwen asked of her, wincing in sympathy and, quite frankly, embarrassment as well. She had wanted so badly for the festival to be perfect—alright, so she wanted that every year; she wanted it even more this year, since it was the first time Anairë experienced it—and now, look at it. Even if they were able to dry out most of the tents, even if most of the wares weren’t ruined, even if the weather cleared up within the next few hours and the other components of the festival were able to go ahead, this would certainly color Anairë’s memories of it.

“Fine, fine.” Anairë sounded much more ‘harried’ than ‘fine,’ but she ploughed forward as if completely unaffected, though her voice was markedly strained, “I just wasn’t expecting a hurricane to descend upon us, that’s all.”

A startled laugh jarred from Eärwen’s mouth. “This is no hurricane, Anairë. Trust me, I would be breaking down the door behind us to get us into the house and down into the cellar if it was. This…” She sighed again, a little more lightly now, the laughter still clinging to her tongue. “…This is just Alqualondë.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Eldar** —‘People of the Stars’ (Quenya); a name first given to the Elves by Oromë when he found them by Cuiviénen, but later came to refer only to those who answered the summons to Aman and set out on the March, with those who chose to remain by Cuiviénen coming to be known as the Avari; the Eldar were composed of these groups: the Vanyar, Ñoldor (those among them who chose to go to Aman), and the Teleri (including their divisions: the Lindar, Falmari, Sindar and Nandor).  
>  **Ellalië** —the Telerin form of 'Eldalië'; 'the Elven-Folk', usually a term used to refer to all of the Elves, though generally someone speaking of the Eldalië is not referring to the Avari.  
>  **Vaniai** —the Telerin Quenya equivalent of 'Vanyar'


	8. Chapter Eight

Storms in Alqualondë were variable in length and in temperament. Some lasted for a few hours, and others lasted for a few days. There were some which were here for no more than a few minutes, though it was rare for them to last upwards of a week—even hurricanes did not linger in one place for so long. When this latest storm descended upon Alqualondë during the Festival of Shells, there had been hope that it might just be a storm that lasted a couple of hours before dissipating or moving on. There was even hope that it might be one of those that lasted just a few _minutes_. There wasn’t much hope, since those storms were rare indeed, but Eärwen had been entertaining the hope for a while.

That hope came to nothing. Eärwen hoped and hoped and hoped, and her hopes led her nowhere every time.

In the end, the storm raged on and on, forcing festival-goers inside and forcing vendors to take down their tents and hustle their wares inside in the rare instances when the rain let up a _little_ , though it never lessened to the drizzle that would have allowed people to remain outside with the aid of umbrellas and oiled cloaks. The storm raged on and on, during all of the days in which the festival was held, and _yes_ , Eärwen supposed they could have taken some of the festivities indoors, but from the very beginning, everyone had preferred to hold them outside, there were some of them that _couldn’t_ be taken inside, and no plans had been made to take them inside in the event of inclement weather. Nowhere that could have hosted festivities hastily brought indoors could be made ready in time. They would have to do something about that, in time for next year’s festival. As for this year…

As for this year, the storm raged on and on and on. It only stopped, either conveniently by some people’s perspective or really, incredibly _suspiciously_ by other people’s perspective, on the day Anairë was set to leave Alqualondë to return home to Tirion.

Yes. How convenient.

The moment the rain finally stopped saw Eärwen staring sourly out of a window at the last few raindrops splattering against the glass. Yes, Ossë had made clear to them that he would only break up those gales that stood a decent chance of actually doing serious damage to Alqualondë, those storms that could have put the city straight into the Sea. Yes, Ossë had been clear on this point from the start, and had never let Eärwen believe anything else, not even for a moment. It had been years since she had last been anything but resigned (if slightly annoyed) when a sudden downpour ruined her plans for the day—she would endure for as long as the world would, provided no violence befell her, and there was very little which she could not do later, with patience.

But still, Eärwen glared at the last raindrops that slid down the glass in water beads that just split off and split off and slowed and slowed until another raindrop came and joined its strength with them. If she didn’t know better—Ossë could get a bit rough when he was feeling moody or rambunctious, but she’d never heard of him spinning storms close enough to shore that they could actually make landfall before dissipating—she would swear that this had been purposeful.

Her evidence? It _felt_ purposeful. No, she had nothing stronger than that. She was never going to have anything stronger than that. It was just a feeling.

“Eärwen, I hate to interrupt, but could you stop moping long enough to help me get this chest closed? It has been exceptionally uncooperative, and I would appreciate the help.”

Eärwen rather doubted that helping Anairë pack up the last of her things was going to make her feel any better than staring out of the window at the still densely-clouded sky, but she turned away from the window anyways. Perhaps it would help her feel better after all, just on a rather different level. Or perhaps that is just the sort of thing we tell ourselves when a new relationship must part ways and confine itself solely to letters, with no respite from separation for at least several months. Eärwen did not know. Eärwen would not be examining it closely enough to risk finding out.

It could make her smile, if only a little bit, if only ruefully, to see the state of Anairë’s room when she was in the middle of packing up her belongings. Everything in her home was always so neat and organized, not a hair out of place, to the point where there were times if, should Eärwen be standing in the room when Anairë was out, and none of Anairë’s writing supplies were out where an onlooker might catch sight of them, it was easy to believe that the room had never been lived in at all. It would have been easy to believe that Anairë’s room in her family’s home was just an exceptionally well-furnished guest room, and one that had never seen use, at that. Anairë disliked it when her smallest siblings, back when they were children themselves, so much as entered her room, for they were wont to drop, break, pull out, scatter, and hide her belongings, leaving Anairë with several hours on her hands where all she was able to do was go through every last nook and cranny in her room to make certain that she did not miss a single thing.

This, however, this was barely-controlled chaos, all of Anairë’s chests and bags haphazardly scattered about the room, some of them yet open, revealing things that had been packed away _without_ the exacting neatness that ruled the day back in Tirion. Perhaps Anairë had simply given up at some point, and planned to sort it out once she had gotten back home. Perhaps she was merely impatient to leave, and did not care what state her clothes got into as a result. Given the way her visit here had ultimately gone, Eärwen would not be too surprised if the latter turned out to be true.

As it happened, Anairë had wound up spending a good deal of her time here down in the archives, reading about the stars and the constellations. Not wishing to miss out, Eärwen had joined her there as often as her own duties allowed. There were some things there that Eärwen had not known about, some things she would allow she found interesting. But it hadn’t been the festival. It had not been what Eärwen had wanted for the trip.

 _And so, I find myself sulking, like a child denied a new toy_ , she reflected, as she set her weight to the chest and _pushed_. _There will be other times_ , she reminded herself. _If Anairë chooses to go live in Valmar for a while, perhaps you could even go visit her there. Not as a princess making a diplomatic visit to the city of the Vaniai and the Ainur, but as a sweetheart going to visit another sweetheart from whom she has had a long separation._

She could do that, yes. It would take some doing, some strings pulled, and most likely having to answer some awkward questions from her parents, neither of whom seemed to grasp just what Anairë was to Eärwen, even though she had invited Anairë here for the Festival of Shells, but she could do that. And Anairë could come here in subsequent years, years when the weather was fairer and less wont to drop inches and inches of rain down upon them and wreck displays and steal away tents to be the playthings of everything that lived far out in waters unexplored by any of the Ellalië.

But that would not change the reality of how the first time had went. Anairë’s first experience of the Festival of Shells will always have been abbreviated, always cut short, always ruined thanks to a tremendously stubborn storm. They can move endlessly forward, but never backwards. The future is always open; the past, never. The first experience is not something either of them can ever get back.

“This was more for you than it was for me, though, wasn’t it?” Anairë asked shrewdly, once Eärwen had confessed what it was that had her in a mood so gloomy as to rival the sky choked with clouds far over their heads. “You didn’t even tell me what the festival was supposed to be until we were in the thick of it, and even that, only after I forced you to. Do be honest, Eärwen, this was about showing off, at least a _little_ bit. I’ve seen you in Tirion at festival-times, and you’ve always seemed just a little underwhelmed.”

They were watching the porters load Anairë’s belongings up into the carriage she would be riding back to Tirion in by herself. Observing closely as the porters handled the largest and most unwieldy of Anairë’s chests gave Eärwen just enough of an excuse to put off answering by a few moments.

But that only held _for_ a few moments, and though Eärwen was not looking Anairë’s way, she could feel Anairë’s gaze boring holes into the side of her face. There was only so long that you could ignore such a stare. Eärwen wondered if even statuary must eventually begin to squirm under the weight of Anairë’s most piercing stares. She would not be at all surprised, and quite frankly, she sympathized wholly with the statuary.

“I do often find them overly decorous,” Eärwen muttered at last, studiously avoiding Anairë’s gaze.

Anairë chuckled. It wasn’t as rare as her laughs, but it was still uncommon enough that Eärwen could not help but mark the sound. There wasn’t anything exceptional about it. It was just a chuckle. But it was still a chuckle out of Anairë’s mouth, and though Eärwen might not have set out to draw it from her lips, it sounded sweet to her ears, nonetheless.

“There, you see? You are like my Ñoldorin relatives where Tirion is concerned, and my Minyarin relatives where Valmar is concerned. You wish for everyone whose opinions you value to concede that Alqualondë is the best of all cities, the greatest achievement of Eldarin architects, the most comfortable place to live, and whatever it is my aunts and uncles get into arguments about over our meal table; personally, I try not to listen too closely.”

Suddenly, Eärwen found herself disproportionately interested in just what mealtimes in Anairë’s family’s home were like when the extended family was visiting, and even more so if the relatives had agreed to put their apparent differences aside when they had come together so recently for the birth of a new member of their shared family. If the answer to that latter point was ‘no,’ Eärwen wondered if there was not a _reason_ that the baby never gave Anairë a moment’s peace, regardless of whether the light pouring in through her window was gold, or silver, or that special, mingled hue. She had never seen any sign of the disagreements on those rare occasions when _she_ had eaten at that table, but then, Anairë’s sense of decorousness was something Eärwen thought might be shared by her mother, at least, and Anairë’s mother was a formidable-enough woman that Eärwen suspected that she could keep the rest of her immediate family in line, at least as far as behaving themselves in front of a princess was concerned.

Still, the thought of it was almost enough to make Eärwen wish that she could sneak into Anairë’s house during mealtimes and eavesdrop on the dinner talk. The idea of Anairë’s paternal and maternal aunts and uncles getting into arguments regarding the virtues of Tirion and Valmar so heated that Anairë’s only solution was to duck her head and try her hardest not to listen to it.

Anairë’s family was far away. There was Eärwen and Anairë, standing in a courtyard in the palace in Alqualondë, watching the porters load the last of Anairë’s belongings into a carriage bound for Tirion. They were almost done. In just a few minutes, Anairë would board that carriage, and be off. If even that much.

“Does not everyone wish others to love their home as well as they themselves love it?” Eärwen asked softly. “Especially here, in lands where we can have things worth loving, things worth clinging to in a place where nothing will ever come along to rip it all away?”

“If one loves a city so,” Anairë responded, just as softly, “then yes, I suppose it would make sense to wish for others to love it just as well. But not everyone loves a city. Not everyone wishes to compete with that sort of love.”

“I’ll never make you compete with any city,” Eärwen promised her laughingly, as Anairë climbed up into the carriage, though the sentiment was not a laughing one at all. “I am more than capable of holding love for more than one thing in my heart at one time.”

“You had best remember that,” Anairë called from the open window, as the carriage began to pull away. “The next time I come here, I do not wish to find that you have wed the city in my absence. That would make for markedly uncomfortable conversation around the dinner table.”

“Ha, I’d sooner wed the Sea! Its embraces are far more yielding! Much less dirt to scrub out of anywhere sensitive!”

Anairë laughed, and laughed, sounding frankly startled with herself, until the rain picked up once more, and she was obliged to shut her window.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Ellalië** —the Telerin form of 'Eldalië'; 'the Elven-Folk', usually a term used to refer to all of the Elves, though generally someone speaking of the Eldalië is not referring to the Avari.  
>  **Vaniai** —the Telerin Quenya equivalent of 'Vanyar'


End file.
